HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS
IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
VOLUME I
THE AUTHOR, AGED ABOUT 5.
IMPRESSIONS
THAT REMAINED
1
MEMOIRS
BY f
ETHEL SMYTH
Mus. Doc.
IN TWO VOLUMES— VOL. I
PART I
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON
(.... TO 1877)
PART II
GERMANY AND Two WINTERS IN ITALY
(1877 TO 1880)
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
o
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & SOTH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919
ML
Hio
.l
IN MEMORY OF M. E. P.
(THE HON. LADY PONSONBY)
AND OF OUR LONG FRIENDSHIP
1890-1916
I find Lady Ponsonby, the wise judge, the firm Liberal,
more and more delightful ; at last one feels she is getting
old — she is eighty-two. She is like a fine flame kindled
by sea-logs and sandalwood — good to watch and good
to warm the mind at, and the heart too.
EDITH SICHEL (1914).
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME
PART I. THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON
PAGE
INTRODUCTION • r • * • • • z
CHAPTER I (. . . TO 1867).
Origins. Professor Smyth ; his Works and his Friends. My
Grandfather ; his Speeches to the Yeomanry during the Riots.
My Sisters and eldest Brother ....... . . • 3
CHAPTER II (. . . TO 1867)
Sidcup Place described. Childish Memories and Adventures.
Crimes and Punishments. Amusements. My ' Passions.' 13
CHAPTER III (. . . TO 1867)
Relations. Hugo J., the family Artist. The redoubtable Colonel
O'H. Old Indians. Household Hindustani. Bonnemaman ;
the ' Legend ' ; her second Husband ; her Difficulties ; her
Men Friends. The Agra Bank fails . •* ', ' "'. . « , . 24
CHAPTER IV (MY FATHER)
My Father's Indian Beginnings ; his Popularity ; his County Work ;
his Politics ; his Dislike of the Artistic Temperament ; his
Reading of the Lessons ; his Characteristics and Verbal Slips ;
his Leniency and Rigidity ; his Death. A valedictory Notice . 35
CHAPTER V (MY MOTHER)
My Mother's Education in France ; she marries, and goes to India ;
her foreign Ways and Unconventionality ; her Appearance ; her
Love of Society ; her Gifts for Languages and Music ; her
difficult Character and Loveableness ; her great Sorrow ; is
bored by having Visitors to stay ; the Monotony of her Life ;
her ill Health and Death ... ... 44
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI (A RETROSPECT)
PAGE
We leave Sidcup for Frimhurst. Our social Framework. Neigh-
bourliness, with Limitations. Parties and Balls. Relations
with the Village. Outdoor Relief. Moral Conditions and
Drunkenness in Frimley ....... 55
CHAPTER VII (1867 TO 1872)
My early musical tendencies. Arrival at Frimhurst. Our new Home
described. Birth of Bob. Johnny goes to Westminster. Dr.
Charles Scott (Uncle Charles) and his Wife (Aunt Susan). A
Tragedy on Fox Hills ........ 61
CHAPTER VIII (1867 TO 1872)
Our Governesses. Miss Hammond's Chignon. The Franco- Prussian
War. Catalogues of ' Passions ' and ' Things to be Avoided.'
Education. Frimley Green and the Fair. Skating and Donkeys.
A Churchyard Episode. A Fight in the ' Three-Decker.' Mary
and I perform at Village Entertainments. A religious Im-
pression. We perform at Aldershot. My Father's Speech.
The Conjuror 68
CHAPTER IX (1867 TO 1872)
Alice's Proposal Scene. Our Boy-Admirers. ' Mr. and Mrs. Smith.'
Musical Tortures. An imaginary Tragedy. Lying. I deter-
mine to study Music at Leipzig. My Father retires and buys
Frimhurst. ' Larking ' the Horses. Farmyard Episodes.
My Father as Country Gentleman ..... 78
CHAPTER X (1872 AND 1873)
Our Diaries. Mary and I go to School. Our Life there. I hear
Patti. Inward Conflicts. Confirmation. A distressing Con-
version. Early ' Poems.' The Priest's Love Affair and
Mr. Longman . . . . ' . / . . . 89
CHAPTER XI (1873 TO 1875)
The Children and Miss Gobell. Their Theatricals. Queer neigh-
bours. A Dance at the Longmans. The Drain Adventure.
Colonel Mclvor and Madame de S. I leave School, learn
Italian, and fail for the Cambridge Local Examination. Alice's
and Mary's Marriages. Johnny's Death . . . 101
CHAPTER XII (1875 AND 1876)
Music and Religion. Social Ambition Phase. The Ewings. ' Aunt
Judy.' Mr. Ewing gives me Harmony Lessons. My Father's
Aversion to him. The lessons are stopped. I visit the O'H.'s
in Ireland. My Engagement to Mr. Willie Wilde. I come out.
Balls. A Sentimental Illusion . . . . . .109
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XIII (1876 AND 1877)
PAGE
A Wagner Concert. I break the Filly. Country House visiting.
' Schon Rothraut.' Reels and a Hunt. Indroduction to
Madame Schumann. First Acquaintance with Brahms' s Music.
My Leipzig Project announced. My Father's Fury. George
Eliot at St. James's Hall. Visit to two Artists. Friends who
backed me up. Militant Methods at Home. Capitulation
of my Father. Departure for Leipzig . . . . 121
APPENDIX I
(a) Letter from Mrs. Opie, March 1848 ..'" . > • .128
(&) Letters from S.D., a Schoolboy Admirer, aged thirteen , . 129
(c) Letters from my Mother, 1873-1875 . . . . .132
(d) Letters from Alexander Ewing, Esq., 1876-1877 ,. . . 137
PART II. GERMANY AND TWO WINTERS
IN ITALY
CHAPTER XIV (SUMMER 1877)
Germany in 1877. Arrival at Leipzig. Description of the Town.
My landlady, Frau Professor Heimbach. My fellow lodger.
Strange Croquet. A Fortnight in Thuringia. George Hens-
chel and Others. Musical Encouragement. Part-Singing in
the Woods . V . . * . . . '' . i 151
CHAPTER XV (AUTUMN 1877)
Old Leipzig. I go disguised to a Concert. The Rontgen Family.
A Blend of Art and Courtship ; Anecdote about Kreisler, as
Contrast . . ' ,« . . ,, ,. '«. , .'..'$ . .*.. . . 158
CHAPTER XVI (WINTER 1877-1878)
The Conservatorium. My Masters. The Gewandhaus Concerts.
The old Concert Hall. Acoustics. Chamber Music. B. turns
over for Frau Schumann. The Libel Suit and an Admirer's
Chivalry. His subsequent Career .... 164
CHAPTER XVII (WINTER 1877-1878)
The Brockhaus Family. New Year's Eve at the Rontgens. The
Drama. The Geistinger Episode. The Tauchnitz Family.
End of the Geistinger Episode . . . . . . 172
CHAPTER XVIII (EARLY IN 1878)
Brahms conducts his D Major Symphony. My Introduction to
him ; his Irony. A Critic's Remark on the Symphony. 1 hear
about the Herzogenbergs. I move to Salomonstrasse 19.
Life there described. I plunge into the World . . .179
x CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIX (EARLY IN 1878)
PAGE
Leipzig Society; the Gewandhaus Gesellschaft, the Professorial
Set, and the Artist World. Particularism. Dialect. Frau
Livia Frege. Frau Lili Wach (Daughter of Mendelssohn) and
her Husband. Orthodox Piety in Germany . ' . . .184
CHAPTER XX (EARLY IN 1878)
Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (' Lisl ') ; her Beauty ; her Talents ;
her musical Genius ; other Characteristics. Her Husband and
his Compositions. The Limburger Family. Two Leipzig
Characters, Frau von B and Frau Dr. E. Anecdotes about
the Latter . • .' . 192
CHAPTER XXI (SPRING 1878)
Herzogenberg becomes my Master. I join the Bach Verein. An
anti-English Stationer. I stay at ' the Berg ' with Frau Doctor
Brockhaus. I fall ill and am nursed by Lisl. Beginning of our
Friendship. A Glance into the Future . . . . .201
APPENDIX II
(a) Letters from myself to my Mother and other Members of the
Family 1877-1878 . " . . . . . . . 207
(b) Letters from Elisabeth von Herzogenberg (Lisl), May 27 to
June 9, 1878 ......... 244
CHAPTER XXII (SUMMER 1878)
Return to England. All Exertion forbidden. A sentimental After-
math. I work badly. We perform the ' Liebeslieder-Walzer.'
Home Finances. Return to Leipzig vid Holland . \ • . 250
CHAPTER XXIII (AUTUMN AND WINTER 1878)
Visit to Utrecht ; Music there. The Zuyder Zee. Arrival at
Leipzig. My ' Variations ' approved. The Merseburger
Household (Salomonstrasse 19). I become ' the Child ' at
the Herzogenbergs. Lisl's Character and Charm. Frau
Schumann's Jubilee and a fantastic Hunt (see footnote, p. 260) 255
CHAPTER XXIV (BRAHMS)
Brahms conducts his Violin Concerto ; his Personality ; his Common
Sense in the Lenbach Dispute ; his Views on Women ; his
Worship of Lisl ; Herzogenberg's Music bores him ; his Relations
with Frau Schumann ; his Manners with Women ; his Horror
of being lionized ; his Taste in Jokes ; his Views on Wagner.
Brahms at the Piano ; his Modesty ; his Kindness to me,
Contempt for Women Composers notwithstanding. Anecdote
about Levi. My Brahms-Poem and its Results. He sends
a Wreath to Wagner's Funeral. His Illness and Death . 261
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER XXV (SPRING 1879)
PAGE
Greig. The Wachs and Herzogenbergs become Friends. Routs.
The Opera. Defects and Advantages of my Training. Rural
Expeditions of the Bach Verein. A Passion Performance in
the Thomas Kirche. Lisl's Parents appear ; they both hate me,
especially her Mother, Frau von Stockhausen . . .271
CHAPTER XXVI (SUMMER 1879 TO SUMMER 1880)
A vague Marriage Scheme. Pan-Germanism. Speeches and a
Disaster. Leipzig Fairs. Christmas at Berlin with the Fiedlers.
Their Personalities. A New Year's Festivity at the Joachims.
Rubinstein and the Young Lady. Spitta. Chrysander on
Old English Music. Fiedler's Collection of Pictures. First
Impressions of Manet's Art. A Victim of the Kaiser. Two
English Friends (one ' musical ') come to Leipzig. A String
Quartett of mine is played at the Wachs. Crostewitz and its
Inhabitants. A Cropper on the Race Course. ' Miss Hop-
in-die Welt/ I go home vid Hamburg and Ragatz. Financial
Crisis at Home 278
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME
THE AUTHOR AS CHILD ..... Frontispiece
MAJOR-GENERAL J. H. SMYTH, C.B. (THE AUTHOR'S
FATHER) ....... Facing p. 35
MRS. J. H. SMYTH (THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER) . „ 44
A DRIVE IN THE DONKEY CART; SKETCH BY THE
REV. HUGO J. ...... ,,72
THE Six Miss SMYTHS AND ' BANCO ' . ,,79
JULIANA HORATIA EWING ('AUNT JUDY') . . „ in
LILI WACH (nee MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY) . „ 190
ELISABETH VON HERZOGENBERG (« LISL ') . . „ 206
MUSICAL QUOTATIONS IN THE FIRST VOLUME
' THE DIVER f , . ...
' MR. AND MRS. SMITH ' ,
A BIRD-CALL HEARD BY THE AUTHOR
FRAULEIN REDEKER'S COMPASS .
PAGE
75
81
205
214
xui
PART I
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON
INTRODUCTION
ONCE, in a roomfull of people, someone suddenly said :
' I wonder what becomes of all the delightful and interesting
children one has known ? ' Startled by this remark we
began discussing it, and came to the conclusion that nearly
all children are interesting and delightful, just as every
coin fresh from the Mint has a certain charm — but
unfortunately as time goes on the original design loses
its sharpness. Then someone else went on to say that
if faithfully written, the memoirs of any child would be
good reading. It was in this spirit that to wile away a
winter of forced inactivity I began to write mine, having
no readers in view at the moment but one or two amiably
inquisitive friends.
Early memoirs are necessarily egoistic, for a child's
recollections are strung together on the thread of its own
little personality. Nor, among such petty joys and sorrows,
triumphs and humiliations, can much picking and choosing
be done. What you remember was evidently important
in your own eyes and there is no other guide to follow.
If anyone should deem the result in this case of general
interest, it will be because, like the immortal ' Diary of
a Nobody/ the daily life described in the first part of
these chronicles might be that of any English family in
analogous circumstances, and my own confessions the
autobiography of any child.
Once girlhood is past, the story perforce becomes less
impersonal. But even here, seeing that the record ends
when it became the question of a public musical career,
maybe that others who have felt the pull of what lies to
VOL, I, B
2 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
right and left of the road you are trying to follow will
find in my later adventures something akin to their own.
Anyhow it is in that hope and belief that I have recounted
them.
One word more. Contemporary correspondence is often
the most interesting part of a book such as this, yet to use
it freely in the text breaks up the narrative. For this
reason I have interpolated six appendix-sections, contain-
ing letters from or about persons concerned in the story.
And it is certain that the large class of readers who are
bored by other people's letters will welcome a method that
simplifies wholesale skipping.
CHAPTER I
... TO 1867
THE title of this section of my Memoirs is a nickname
given by one of my five brothers-in-law to the family he
allied himself with. Uncle Charles Scott expressed the
same idea in other words when he declared the Irish strain
in our blood was predominant ; but we were only Irish of
the Pale and our branch had been back in England for
three generations. Originally of Heath Hall, Yorkshire,
where the parent stock still survives, we went to Ireland
in 1625, and did so well there as to absorb large parts of
Meath, Westmeath, and Queen's County, habitually filling
most of the Bishoprics with ourselves and our relations.
At one time I was delighted to believe, as my father
who was vague on such matters told us was the case, that
our direct ancestor was a certain Edward Smyth, Bishop
of Down and Connor, who, in his sub-character of chaplain
to William of Orange, drafted the laws concerning Irish
Catholics. Later, being seized with a passion for genealogy,
and incidentally becoming acquainted with the nature
of those laws, I was glad to find that instead of deriving
from the person responsible, I should say, for half the
religious troubles that have since convulsed Ireland, our
progenitor was his younger brother, of whom nothing was
to be learned except that his name was John. In straight
line from this obscure Smyth, travelling always via younger
sons, we arrive at my great-grandfather, who having been
destined for the army had the sense to emigrate to Liver-
pool and try his hand at banking. Reversing this idea my
grandfather, again younger son of a younger son, began
3
4 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
life in the Light Cavalry, fought in the Peninsular War,
and ended by carrying on the bank in Macclesfield.
The only touch of drama — mild drama — that enlivens
the family history is, that during the invasion by Prince
Charlie, my great-grandparents pursued what seems to
have been the usual course in those days under such circum-
stances, and retired with the rest of the country families
to a spot unlikely to be visited by the soldiery, the Peak
of Derby. Meanwhile their home, ' The Fence/ was
occupied by Charles Edward and his suite, who left behind
them some curious glass hunting goblets, one beautifully
engraven with the Prince's portrait, the Order of the Holy
Ghost and the queue being executed with special care.
My father maintained it was very wrong to call a lawful
heir ' the Pretender ' ; none the less he always styled this
relic ' the Pretender's glasses ' as did his father and grand-
father before him.
In the course of my genealogical investigations, the
gratifying fact was established that our line of Smyths
were admirable God-fearing people, for the most part with
pronounced literary tastes ; but among them all there is
not one single outstanding personality, except perhaps my
bachelor great-uncle William Smyth, Master of Peter-
house College, Cambridge.
When but an undergraduate his father's bank failed (as
did many banks during the wars with France) and finding
himself bereft of everything save an ' elegant scholarship/
which someone brought to the notice of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, he became tutor to young Tom Sheridan.
A memoir of his patron, printed privately in later years,
is written with a discretion which, though one admires,
one cannot help regretting, for life at Isleworth must
have been a fantastic experience. To get a sight of the
master of the house was evidently next door to impossible,
so incalculable were his movements, so irregular his hours ;
and during his prolonged absences from home in vain would
the tutor write, suggesting change of air, or change of
curriculum for the pupil — in vain demand funds to run the
household, incidentally mentioning his own salary, for
Sheridan had acquired the dun-haunted man's habit of
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 5
never opening letters. Nor was it possible to follow him
to London and force an interview, for, living in perpetual
terror lest some misfortune should befall his idolised and
totally neglected boy (who was not even allowed to skate
for fear of drowning) the orders were, that under no circum-
stances whatever was the tutor to leave his charge for a
moment. Thus the two unfortunates would find them-
selves stranded in some sea-side lodging-house long after
everyone else had left the place — penniless, living on the
precarious credit of the great man's name, yet not daring
to go home without permission. In fact this little record
of an inmate's experience in that household is just what
you would expect ; yet the main note is admiration for
the fallen genius, who had captured my great-uncle's
imagination when an Eton boy, mingled with distress
at the ravages of his vices and weaknesses. One gathers
there were occasional scenes between the two men, but
never once, drunk or sober, did Sheridan fail to treat his
subordinate as a gentleman and an equal ; in fact nothing
stands out more strongly in these hyper-delicate pages
than the loveableness of their subject.
' The Professor/ as he was called in the family, also
published a book of ' Lectures on the French Revolution '
which I have never read, and a volume of ' English Lyrics '
in mild amatory vein. Everyone in those days wrote
verses, otherwise it is inexplicable that an intelligent man
should have printed such rubbish — and intelligent he really
was. In an autobiographical note, far the most interesting
though not the funniest part of the ' English Lyrics/ he
remarks that his father could repeat by heart almost
any passage you chose to call for in * classics such as Swift,
Churchill, Dry den, and Shakespere/ and that on one
occasion, after reading Thompson's * Palemon and Lavinia '
only once through, he repeated it without a mistake.
My father used to tell an odd little story about his
uncle and Jane Austen, who were close friends. It appears
that the authoress, wishing to get at his real opinion of one
of her novels, put on a friend to pump him, concealing her-
self meanwhile behind a curtain. The verdict was luckily
all that could be desired , till the Professor remarked he
6 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
was not satisfied as to her orthodoxy, having detected
certain Unitarian leanings in her later works ; upon which
Jane Austen burst forth from her hiding place, indignantly
crying : ' That's not true ! ' One may question whether
any degree of intimacy justifies such, a stratagem, but no
doubt she knew her man ; anyhow this curious sidelight
on an elusive personality almost condones the ' English
Lyrics.'
In another great friend of his, Amelia Opie, wife of
the painter — a literary celebrity in the style of her con-
temporaries Mrs. Radcliffe and Mrs. Barbauld — I always
took interest, because, after being for forty years the most
inveterate woman of the world, she suddenly joined the
Society of Friends and devoted herself to philanthropy
mitigated with travel. It appeared that her adoring but
home-loving husband persuaded her to try authorship
in order to wean her from society ; the result was that
she at once became famous and went out more than ever.
The Professor was our high-water mark in the way of
distinction, and I have sometimes said to myself that
though it must be pleasant to have brilliant ancestors,
the possible legacy of an exhausted nervous system is
perhaps not worth the glory of a flaming pedigree. In
fact it is mainly to the consistent level of decent mediocrity
in our own that I attribute the extraordinary health and
high spirits of the branch I am concerned with in these
pages.
r- '"'•* • • * •
One day during the lifetime of my brother Johnny,
who had a turn for mathematics, and whose memory was
accurate, we children started trying to fix the date of our
earliest recollections, but it was found impossible to decide
exactly when the first event I recall took place ; namely
an attempt to jump out of the low pony-carriage as it was
crawling up St. Mary Cray's hill, which ended in my falling
on my back in the road, having failed to observe that
Johnny and the groom always jumped in the direction the
carriage was moving in. Thus my conscious life began
with the first of a long series of croppers — not a bad
beginning. *,
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 7
We lived in those days at Sidcup, then quite a country
place, selected by my father as not too far from Woolwich,
where, on his return to England after the Indian Mutiny,
he took up the command of the Artillery Depot. The
Indian forces to which he belonged were then in course
of fusion with the regular army, and being very popular,
and having served with distinction, he was considered
the right man for a task requiring both tact and common
sense. I can see him now, starting for the daily ride to
his office mounted on his i8-hand charger Paddy, who
later filled the parts of hunter, brougham horse, and coal-
cart horse with good humour and propriety. I have even
ridden him myself, and an old friend once told us his first
sight of me was wrong end upwards, suspended by the
foot on Paddy's off side with my long hair sweeping the
grass, the saddle having slipped round in Bramshill Park.
As a tiny child I firmly believed the horse-radish served with
the Sunday joint was plucked from the white saddle-
marks on Paddy's high withers, and for this reason had
an aversion to horse-radish sauce years after I knew the
truth about it.
At the time of that leap from the pony carriage the
Sidcup household consisted of my paternal grandparents,
who came to live with us after the Mutiny, my parents,
and five children — four girls and a boy. As time went on
two more girls arrived on the scene, Bob my youngest
brother being born the year after we left Sidcup ; in fact
we eventually blossomed into one of the large families
that in those days were rather the rule than the exception.
Looking at the portrait of what our friend George
Henschel called my grandfather's ' dear old port-wine
face/ one remembers the legend that his last action before
he died was to stroke his stomach and remark with a
chuckle : ' To think of the hogsheads of port I have con-
soomed in my time ! ' He might well say so, for he lived
to be ninety-six — a splendid, intensely alive old man
whom I should have worshipped in later years, whereas
then, alas ! I only felt a child's repulsion to extreme old
age. He always wore a black velvet skull-cap which was
associated in my mind with wizards, and I disliked having
8 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
to kiss his scrubby apple-red old cheek, wondering un-
easily why there was always white powder on the lapels
of his coat. Again I detested a favourite joke of his, which
was to say very slowly, when a certain dreaded hour struck :
' Shadrach . . . Meschach . . . and . . .To BED WE GO ! ' —
the last words with a sudden roar. But what chiefly
roused my disapproval was his comment when Johnny,
who had put something very hot into his mouth, instantly
spat it out ; ' Well done, my boy/ cried grandpapa, ' a
fool would have swallowed it ! ' Being imbued with
nursery notions of pretty behaviour I was shocked at the
coarseness of the males of the family.
The other day, examining old papers of his, I came
across some cuttings from the Manchester Courier which
throw, I think, a picturesque light on the past. After
leaving the army he had been given command of the
Macclesfield Squadron of the Cheshire Yeomanry, a force
much in request during the frequent riots, and with two
of these incidents the extracts are concerned. Here is
the first.
1 Our squadron of yeomanry reached home on Thursday
and formed in the Market Place where they were addressed
by Captain Smyth ; we give the speech as nearly as we
could collect it.
" Gentlemen — It is with the most heartfelt satisfaction
that I address you on your return from performing as good
and loyal subjects your duty to your King and country.
Gentlemen, I am desired by my brother officers to convey
to you their best thanks for the alacrity with which you
mustered, and for your soldier-like conduct on this, as on
all former occasions, when your country's weal has required
your protection. With their thanks I beg you will accept
my own. But, gentlemen, I am instructed to convey
thanks to you from a much higher authority, from that
distinguished officer, Major Gen. Sir James Lyon, with
whom I have had the honour of an interview, and who has
personally expressed to me the high estimation in which
he holds your valuable services. The General deeply
regrets the necessity for calling you out at this inclement
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 9
season of the year ; but the readiness with which you
obeyed the call tends only to prove, that neither the
scorching sun of autumn, nor the chilling blasts of winter,
can abate the ardour that glows in your manly bosoms.
The General further informed me that the call for your
services was not only necessary, but most urgent, for that
intelligence of a most alarming nature had been received
on oath from various quarters, and from sources the most
respectable, all agreeing that a simultaneous rising was
intended to take place on Sunday last from Glasgow to
Stockport, and in Nottingham. Proud am I to say, that
our town was not in the list of those enumerated. No,
gentlemen, our town is a loyal town, and I trust it will
never lose its fair fame by the base conduct of the few radical
wretches whose dwelling is amongst us. Gentlemen, when
I last had the pleasure of addressing you, I told you those
radical reformers never durst, nor ever would, stand the
charge of yeomanry, and I still feel persuaded they never
will. Of their diabolical intentions there can be no doubt,
and they would ere this have been carried into execution,
had their proceedings not been closely watched. Gentle-
men, I again thank you for your attention, and you can
now return to your homes with the universal satisfaction
of having done your duty, and I hope you will be allowed
to enjoy the festivities of the approaching season with peace
and comfort. And ere you depart, I trust our worthy
chaplain who is on my left will give you his blessing."
The next extract shows that my grandfather had
underrated the power of the ' radical wretches ' to stir
up strife.
' Prior to the dismissal of the squadron of horse they
were addressed in an animated speech by one of their
officers, Capt. Smyth, a gentleman who has seen much
service in the field, and had a command at the storming
of Seringapatam. His observations, as nearly as we could
collect, were these — " Your conduct has, during the four
days and nights elapsed in this service, been so steady
and determined, and your discipline so exemplary, that
io IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
henceforth I shall have the same confidence in you as I
have ever had in the regular forces of the crown. To your
firm and cool intrepidity it is owing that we return from
the achievement of an arduous service with our pistols
yet undischarged, and our swords unstained with our
countrymen's blood. How far this moderation has been
met with a corresponding temper by the deluded foes of
England's peace, your own dwellings, cowardly assailed
in our absence, are here before your eyes to testify. Happy
for Macclesfield that we were far hence while the wretched
enterprise was in progress ! Had we returned in the night
of yesterday, according to our orders first received, justice
had demanded a sacrifice the possibility of which I shudder
to contemplate.
" Farewell, my friends, and distant, far distant, be the
day which shall arm us against the hearts of our fellow
townsmen."
I cannot quite understand why the counter-orders
which enabled the foes of England to escape retribution
should be a subject for rejoicing ; perhaps this sentiment
was merely a rhetorical flourish.
My grandmother left no impression on my mind ; and
as my father and mother will be described later, I will
pass on to my own generation, beginning with the eldest,
Alice, supposed never to have been naughty in her life,
and whose goodness one governess said was ' positively
monotonous/ Of this specially beloved sister I chiefly
remember that she said her Catechism in what we used
to call a squeaky voice — that is a voice to which she has
been prone all her life when reading family prayers. I also
remember that she once said to me : ' You have a very
strong will ; why not will to be good ? ' and that this tribute
to my strength of character secretly delighted me. Whether
the advice was followed I cannot say, but to harness the
pride of a child to the cart is a good receipt.
Johnny, the next of the family, was at that time my
model, my tastes being essentially boyish — a trait he
met with mingled disapproval and patronage. I soon
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON n
noticed that I climbed higher and was generally more
daring than he, and no doubt dwelt on the fact, which
would partly account for a certain lack of sympathy between
us. Being himself of a quiet orderly disposition, perhaps
too he disliked the violent ways that made my mother call
me ' the stormy petrel '; anyhow I always thought he
judged me severely.
After Johnny came Mary ; two years later I arrived —
the first of the bunch to be born in England, all the rest
being little Indians. When the Mutiny broke out our
parents were at home on leave, having brought with them
Alice and Johnny, who were getting too old for the climate.
As often happened in those days the baby, Mary, had been
left behind in charge of a cousin, the idea being to return
to her in a few months ; and while my father was hurrying
back alone to India, Mary went through all sorts of vicissi-
tudes, was carried off to a place of safety by her ayah,
hidden behind a haystack, and so on, till arrangements
could be made for sending her home.
My father left England on June 30, and I was born on
the 23rd day of the following April — a ten months' child.
In pre-suffragette days I was proud of this fact, having
heard that such children are generally boys and always
remarkable ! Since then I have ascertained that no one
but the most benighted old Gamps ever held such a theory,
and wonder if the latter part of it was an invention for
soothing paternal doubts and suspicions.
Mary and I shared a bed, an uncomfortable arrange-
ment for her, as I was afraid of the dark and apt to awake
in the night demanding comfort. She eventually insisted
on a bolster, which our nurses called ' the old man/ being
put between us under the bottom sheet, but promised to
hold my hand on Monday nights till I fell asleep, and I
spent the whole week looking forward to Monday. I was
also terrified of churchyards, and as the Church was close
by, used to slip out after dark and force myself to walk
a given distance, say twenty steps, along the path between
the tombstones, rushing home in agony after the ordeal
was over.
There were four years between me and the next child
12 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
Nina, a gap accounted for, as I used innocently to explain
to enquirers, by my father's absence in India. I well
remember the change when I ceased being the spoiled
baby ; details escape me but not the ache and fury of it.
The births of the other two Sidcup children, Violet and
Nelly, evidently took place, but I remember nothing about
these events ; indeed my early recollections, when not
concerning myself only, are chiefly connected with Johnny
and Mary.
When my grandfather died (1864) grandmama went
to live with one of my aunts, and my parents moved into
the best bedroom.
CHAPTER II
... TO 1867
OF my own generation, all of whom except Johnny are
alive at the present day, I shall speak as seen through my
childish eyes ; of my parents, who are both dead, I shall
try presently to give the impression their personalities
left with me in later years. But first let me describe our
home.
Sidcup Place, in the parish of Footscray, Kent, was
originally a small, square, Queen Anne house, separated
from the main road by a high wall covered with ivy, between
the two a strip of garden. A wing had been added later,
along the first story of which, facing the real garden which
was at the back, ran what seemed to me then an endless
gallery, the most ideal of places for children to rush up
and down and yell in. Connected in my mind with this
gallery is one of those mysterious incidents that are never
really cleared up, and which I for one believed was a case
of crime too heinous to be explained to good children.
A cousin of ours, Alfred S., had apparently shut the cat
up in a small cupboard which stood in a certain place at
the end of the gallery — a place in which an imprisoned cat
should have had every chance of advertising her presence.
But she made no sound ; perhaps she was a delicate minded
cat. Whether she actually died of starvation, or was
discovered in the nick of time, I forget, but from that
moment Alfred became a sinister figure in our collection
of cousins, and when he died a few years later I always
believed the cat had something to do with it.
There were roomy stables and a big old-fashioned granary
13
i4 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
mounted on stone pillars, yet none the less infested, so
they told us, by rats — a useful legend. The grounds were
charming ; on one side of the croquet lawn was the most
enormous acacia I have ever seen, the bloom of which
never failed, and on the other a fine cedar. Beyond was
a walled kitchen garden with flowery borders and rose
patches, and the object of our lives was to mount the
walls, unobserved, from the far side in quest of forbidden
fruit. Once I remember the gardener, who had stealthily
removed the ladder, suddenly appearing with a long switch ;
we flew along the top, he at the bottom of the wall, calling
out as we reached the spot where the ladder should have
been : * Now I've got yer, yer little warmints/ and I am
glad to say I followed Johnny's lead and took a flying leap
down into safety, a drop of eight or nine feet — not a
mean performance for a child of less than that number of
years.
Beyond the kitchen garden was a shrubbery that
seemed to me then what the woods in Rossetti's sonnets
seem to me now, — a vast mysterious place full of glades
and birds, wildflowers and bracken ; beyond that again,
not on our property I think, was a nut-wood intersected
by green paths one exactly like the other, in which I never
strayed far from my elders for fear of getting lost. I was
always haunted with this particular terror, and once, when
separated for one second from my family in the midst of
a seething fire-work crush at the Crystal Palace, started
such appalling yells of ' I shall never see my dear Papa
and Mama again ! ' that the crowd instantly divided to
enable my father's hand once more to grasp mine.
Fringed with disreputable-looking willows was a duck
pond, on which we used to put forth in wine boxes and
tubs ; and hard by an old elm-tree, in which Alice, Johnny,
and a friend of his built one of the many descendants of
the Tree House in the ' Swiss Family Robinson/ It had a
floor, and heaps of shelves and hooks, and we were allowed
to have tea up there when we had been very good. As
milk warm from the cow figured among our treats I pre-
tended to love it, but really was rather nauseated, and
privately thought milking an improper sight. It seemed
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 15
cruel, too, to maul the poor cows like that, and when the
gruff cowman said they liked it, he was not believed.
I have two special farmyard recollections, one being
the occasion on which young Maunsell B — a school friend
of Johnny's who spent most of his holidays with us and
considered himself engaged to Mary — promised me sixpence
if I would ride a slim black pig called Fairylight round
the yard. For some reason or other we were dressed in
clean, open-work, starched frocks, and when, after being
shot off on to the manure heap, I was dragged into my
father's study by our infuriated nurse, it was easy to see
he could hardly keep his countenance. The other incident
was my bribing the cowman (again with sixpence) to let
me see a pig killed — conduct which deeply shocked and
horrified Johnny who considered such sights a male privilege.
The terrific scolding that followed was unnecessary, since
for months afterwards I turned green whenever I heard a
pig squealing. At last even the nurse pitied me and would
say : ' Bless your heart he's only squealing for his dinner/
which I hope was true. Otherwise I am quite sure I was
not a cruel little girl, except perhaps later on in the donkey
days, when dreadful things were done with the butt end
of a whip ; but anyone who has had to do with donkeys
will make allowances.
Among other memories such as these, to which one can
put no exact date, certain only that they root in the earliest
days of one's childhood, is the great occasion when the
house caught fire. A modest blaze, caused by the light-
hearted way builders used to work beams into kitchen
chimneys, it was soon got under ; but I remember the in-
creasing smell of charred wood, and the wild excitement
when the floor of our big cupboard was found to be smoulder-
ing, the nursery being above the kitchen. For days
carpenters were in the house putting down new boards,
and when the nurse's foot went through the ceiling below,
the cook, whose imagination no doubt was running on
workmen's tools, declared she had taken it for ' a great big
'ammer.' Whereupon everyone in the house began staring
at nurse's feet, and there were allusions to ' the blacks/ whose
legs are notoriously planted half way between heel and toe.
16 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
Another vivid recollection is Danson Park, inhabited
by a cross, gruff-voiced old uncle, husband of Papa's eldest
sister, who did not like children. As usual in those days
there were a bakehouse and dairies, and we were allowed
to skim a cup-full of cream from any bowl we liked. But
the bakehouse was the great attraction, for there we used
to knead little dough mice, with currants for eyes, poking
them ourselves into the oven to take home by and by. I
remember that as a rule they were either stodgy and grey,
or very white and requiring to be broken up with chisel and
hammer. There seemed to be no medium. But among
the many pleasanter greedy memories I have stored up in
my life, and hope yet to store, is the exquisite flavour of
some muddy perch which were caught by us one afternoon
in a stream that ran through beautiful Footscray Place,
and cooked for supper as a very special treat.
Another incident stands out among all the rest, uncanny,
inexplicable, appealing to the agitated imaginativeness
nearly all children possess, though what becomes of it
later on one cannot think ; — an emotion no one handles
more supremely than German writers such as Hoffmann
and his contemporaries. Again the scene is at Footscray
Place, in front of a great jar full of what I now fancy must
have been ears of bearded Egyptian wheat, and which we
were told came out of a mummy's coffin. But according
to my conviction they were thousand-year-old insects, not
really dead but in a state of suspended animation ; for
when placed in a soup-plate with a little water at the bottom
they presently began to swell, stretch out their legs, and
turn slow somersaults. No one knows what nightmares
followed that particular treat.
Finally there is one more memory, dateless, but im-
perishable, because I was never allowed to hear the end of
it — an occasion on which all unconsciously a life's philosophy
was formulated. Once grandmama helped me to some
pudding, and seeing I did not touch it exclaimed : ' Why,
I thought that was your favourite pudding ! ' My answer
was : ' Yes, but this is so little I can't eat it.'
I think on the whole we were a naughty and very
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 17
quarrelsome crew. My father once wrote and pinned on
the wall : ' If you have nothing pleasant to say hold your
tongue ' ; an adage which, though excellent as receipt for
getting on in society, was unpopular in a nursery such as
ours, for words lead to blows and we happened to love
fighting. There was one terrific battle between Mary and
myself in the course of which I threw a knife that wounded
her chin, to which she responded with a fork that hung for
a moment just below my eye, Johnny having in the mean-
time crawled under the table.
Then again there was a loft in which queer old swords
and pistols looted by my father in his Indian campaigns
were stored away, together with hideous discarded family
portraits, to stab which was of course irresistible. But the
strange thing is that we often fought with these weapons
among ourselves, not infrequently in anger, and yet did
each other no serious damage. It was in the loft that our
first smoking essays took place. Some people say this is an
acquired taste ; if so someone acquired mine for me before
I was born, for we often smoked bits of my father's broken
canes, as well as tea rolled inside brown paper, and I can
truthfully say the thing came as naturally to me as eating
pear-drops, nor was I ever the worse for it.
Of course we merited and came in for a good deal of
punishment, including having our ears boxed, which in
those days was not considered dangerous, and my mother's
dramatic instinct came out strongly in her technique as
ear-boxer. With lips tightly shut she would whip out
her hand, hold it close to one's nose, palm upwards, for
quite a long time, as much as to say : ' Look at this ! You'll
feel it presently ' — and then . . . smack !
I think I am the only one of the six Miss Smyths who
has ever been really thrashed ; the crime was stealing some
barley sugar, and though caught in the very act, per-
sistently denying the theft. Thereupon my father beat
me with one of grandmama's wooden knitting needles, a
thing about 2} feet long with a knob at one end. He
was the least cruel of men, and opponents of corporal punish-
ment will say its brutalising effect is proved by the fact
that when I howled he merely said : ' The more noise you
VOL. I. C
i8 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
make the harder I'll hit you.' Hit hard he did, for a fort-
night later, when I joined Alice, who had been away all
this time at an aunt's, she noticed strange marks on my
person while bathing me, and was informed by me that it
came from sitting on my crinoline.
Even in after years my mother could not bear to think
about that thrashing. All I can say is it left no wound in
my memory as did snubs, and was the only punishment
that ever had any effect — for I dreaded being hurt. In-
deed to run the risk of ordinary pains and penalties, and
make the best of it when overtaken by them, was quite
part of our scheme, and I am glad to know that some of
our happy thoughts when under punishment extorted
unwilling admiration even from our chastisers.
For instance one day, when Mary and I knew that in-
carceration in an empty room at the top of the house would
surely be our lot, we seized as many books as we could lay
hold of, and stuffed them into our drawers, which buttoned
up at the sides. I remember the agony of feeling them
slip lower and lower as we were herded upstairs, and how
finally, just as the key was turned on us, down they came
in an avalanche. On another occasion we were locked up
in Papa's dressing-room and the shutters were barred ;
but there was light enough to ransack his wardrobe and
construct, with the aid of pillows and bolster, a complete
effigy of him lying on his back on the floor in full hunting
costume. And as finishing touch, the pincushion, with
an inscription pricked out in pins, ' For dear Papa,' was
laid on the effigy's breast. If that didn't melt them I really
don't know what would, but as a matter of fact an in-
discreet word let drop now and again by visitors made us
suspect that a more lenient view of our crimes obtained
than might have been supposed. Anyhow I know we were
considered very quaint and amusing children, and, as
happens in most families, were alternately encouraged by
guests to chatter, and snubbed by our parents for being
forward.
The two great indoor occupations were boat-building
and a game called ' grandeurs ' — really dressing up and
acting. It took its name from a sack thus labelled, in which
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 19
were stowed away remnants of my mother's old ball dresses,
feathers, the huge bunches of artificial grapes then in
fashion, and gold braid from my father's uniforms — our
theatrical wardrobe of course. The word ' grandeurs ' had
probably been used in fun by mother, who was brought
up in France, but we pronounced it in broad English ' grann-
djers/ To this day the succession of small cardboard
boxes in which are packed the modest store of ornaments
I take about with me are inscribed ' grandeurs/ and the
smart housemaids in country houses who lay out the con-
tents on my dressing-table may well be astonished at this
designation.
Like all children we of course ' acted ' our parents'
friends, and one of Johnny's and my most admired pro-
ductions was a visit from our neighbours the Sydneys.
Lord Sydney, then Lord Chamberlain, was the most pompous
old gentleman I have ever seen, exactly like ' the Earl '
in melodrama, with his curled grey whiskers and gold
pince-nez. He had a way of holding out two ringers to
Johnny and saying ' how do boy ' which was done justice
to by his personator. Lady Sydney was rather a dear,
I used to think, and by crinkling up my nose, looking down
it, and complaining of the east wind, I was considered not
only to resemble her as much as a child of seven can
resemble a woman of forty-five or fifty, but to give a
satisfactory rendering of what we were told was ' the Paget
manner.' I particularly remember the Sydneys, of course,
because they were our local grandees — also because their
extreme friendliness to my parents caused some heart-
burning to other less favoured neighbours.
When engaged in boat building, a type of conversation
prevailed — result of absorption in our job combined with
habitual garrulousness — which we ourselves recognised
as idiotic and called ' ship conversations.' This was the
sort of thing : ' I say ! '— ' What ? ' (Pause.) ' I say ! '—
' Well ? ' ' D'you know what I'm going to do ? I'm
going to make a rudder.' (Long pause.) ' What for ? ' —
' D'you mean to say you don't know what a rudder's for ;? '
— ' Of course I know what a rudder's for.' (Pause.)
' Wha-a-at ? '— ' Of course I know what it's for.' (Long
20 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
pause.) ' Then why did you ask ? ' — ' Ask what ? ' — ' Why
I was going to make one/ — ' I didn't ask why you were/ —
' O what a cracker ! Mary, didn't she ask why I was making
a rudder ? ' — and so on by the hour. Needless to say our
ships were raced on the pond and always turned turtle.
The final scene in each day's drama was going down
to dessert in starched, richly beribboned frocks, our hair
well crimped, and sometimes as a great treat a teaspoonful
of sherry would be added to our tumbler of water. In later
years Nina was once heard confiding to her nurse that the
one wine she could not bear was sherry and water.
It will surprise no one to learn that I didn't care much
for dolls, but strange to say Mary was in the same case.
Of course we had dolls, but they spent most of their time
in strict quarantine, it being our habit to inflict on them
long illnesses supposed to be infectious and yet to require
no nursing. The fact that they bored us was too revolu-
tionary to be faced, so we had to find some plausible reason
for ridding ourselves of their hated company. The only
difficulty was to invent enough new diseases. Up to the
time I am thinking of the family had been immune from
measles, but not so the dolls, and when, at our wit's end,
we decided to give them a second bout, Johnny objected
that no one ever had measles twice — and his word carried
weight. Shortly afterwards the whole household was
down with it, including my mother who became exceedingly
ill, but I remember the incident mainly because of my
joy that for once the great Johnny had been wrong, my
mother having had measles when a child.
As I am on the theme of epidemics, which of us can ever
forget the whooping-cough visitation ? how we wandered
about whooping for weeks and weeks, armed with dreadful
little jampots that were hidden under sofas when visitors
came, and inadvertently kicked over. After that, the one
thing Mary drew the line at was the dolls having whooping-
cough.
She was far the more ladylike child of the two. Besides
a strong regard for appearances she had presence of mind
of the sort the French call aplomb, and would come with
flying colours out of situations that, to use an admirable
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 21
slang expression, floored me ; in fact the reproach so
often levelled in the nursery of making a spectacle of
oneself could seldom be addressed to her with justice. But
one day circumstances were too strong for her. Travelling
backwards in a shut carriage always made us both feel
sick, and once at a review at Woolwich, when we were
perched on the top of the brougham to get a good view,
poor Mary was overcome before the whole of Her Majesty's
forces. It was some time before I let her hear the last
of that.
Those were of course the days of croquet, but I cannot
remember our playing that game at children's parties.
I hated outdoor parties, because one was dressed up at
an unseasonable hour and had to behave like a little lady ;
also, as happened later in the long struggle for the vote,
the males, who were unable to do without us in private
life, cold-shouldered us in public, and it may be imagined
how a tomboy would resent this.
To go to the seaside in the summer was part of our
ritual. London was even then a big place, and then, as
now, poured its drains into the Thames ; nevertheless
Southend, a place no modern hygienic mama would dream
of sending children to, was generally our bourne. There
and at Broadstairs my life-long passion for the sea awoke ;
the sea, that is, as viewed from the land. As for the drains,
my father had sturdy, old-world views on such subjects,
and often said there was nothing harmful about ' a good
open stink.'
It is curious to think how much less fuss was made
in those days about children's ailments and- accidents.
For instance one day, when our parents, who were away
on a visit, were expected home, I made some toffee, but
forgot the first rule of all, to butter the plate, consequently
the mess stuck to it. I leant my whole weight on the
knife, holding the plate firmly, the toffee came away, and
I cut my left thumb literally to the bone. It ought to
have been a case of lockjaw. I held it in a jug of water
and bandaged it with rags, and when the parents arrived
all my mother said was : ' That comes of wanting two
treats in one day ' (the first treat being their return home).
22 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
The result of these Spartan methods is, that all my life
I have only just been able to span an octave with my
left hand.
At this stage of my existence I stood in great awe of
my father, but adored my mother, and remember her
dazzling apparitions at our bedside when she would come
to kiss us goodnight before starting for an evening party.
I often lay sleepless and weeping at the thought of her
one day growing old and less beautiful. Besides this,
wild passions for girls and women a great deal older than
myself made up a large part of my emotional life, and it
was my habit to increase the anguish of love by fancying
its object was prey to some terrible disease that would
shortly snatch her from me. Whether this was simply
morbidity, or a precocious intuition of a truth insisted on
by poets all down literature — from Jonathan and David
to Tristan and Isolde — that Love and Death are twins,
I do not know, but anyhow I was not to be put off by
glaring evidence of robust health. I loved for instance
Ellinor B., a stout young lady who rode to hounds, was
a great toxophilite as they were called in those days,
led the singing in Church in a stentorian voice, and was
altogether as bouncing a specimen of healthy young woman-
hood as could be met with. Persuaded nevertheless that
this strong-growing flower was doomed to fade shortly,
I one day asked Maunsell if he did not think she was dying
of consumption, and shall never forget my distress when
he answered with a loud guffaw : ' Consumption ? Yes,
I should think she may die of consumption, but not the
kind you mean ! '
At Sidcup too I learned that the accents of tragic
passion have as poor a chance of being understood in the
nursery as elsewhere. I worshipped my lovely cousin
Louie, and one day when she took me on her lap and cuddled
me, I murmured, burying my face in her ample bosom :
' I wish I could die ! ' — whereupon the nurse exclaimed :
' Why, Miss Ethel, whatever makes you say such a thing ?
/ thought you were so fond of your cousin ! ' People's
love affairs, in as far as I could get to hear about them,
always arrested my attention, and at a time when I was
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 23
too young to know either the artist's passion or personal
ambition, love seemed to me the only thing that mattered ;
but nothing less than Keats's unquenchable flame of course.
One day a letter from an admirer of Louie's was indiscreetly
read out in my presence (she was then a young widow) and
I was much puzzled by the phrase : ' O f or one hour of
your love ! ' Of what use, I said to myself, could one
hour be to anyone ? but for once asked no questions.
Most of my early recollections are connected with
turbulent love agonies (my own, I mean) or equally tragic
humiliations, such as when one's drawers came off at
children's parties — a trouble little girls are born to as
the sparks fly upward ; or again when I handed a penny
to the Post Office clerk, halfpenny postage being unknown
in those days, and guessed from his manner of re-echoing
my demand for ' a pennyworth of stamps ' that I had said
something ridiculous. From one of these trials — agonies of
love — years, alas ! set us free ; but the other — an occasional
sense of having made a fool of oneself — will be with some
of us to the end !
To conclude, I may mention the fact that on Sundays
all the Mudie books were swept into a cupboard and
replaced by various well-bound serious works, one of
which, ' James on the Collects,' was known to us as
' James on the Colic.' Sometimes we would surrep-
titiously overhaul the immured library books, and were
driven to the conclusion that one or two novels must
surely be upstairs in my mother's bedroom.
It is no doubt in connection with this and other
Sunday practices that Nelly and Bob, in all innocence,
adopted a curious version of one of their Sunday hymns
which seems to have escaped the notice of their elders.
The fourth word of the first line of this absurd doggerel
is Sabbath, but the children's reading was :
' This is Sunday, Suffer-day.'
CHAPTER III
... TO 1867
RELATIONS played a great part in our lives. Some are
remembered because of one single incident connected with
them ; for instance there was a brother of my father's
whom we disliked, chiefly, I really believe, because waking
up one night and suddenly feeling the ivory bell-handle
bob on his bald head, he was so terrified that he began
bellowing like a bull (or as Violet once said when a child,
like a bull in a basin) and roused the whole household.
Or again there was an aunt of my mother's, a shrewd old
maid with a twinkling eye — one of the few relations who
liked me — whom I remember because of two remarks she
made to Johnny. Once when he was fidgeting she ex-
claimed : ' I really believe you must be growing a tail ! '
which I found intensely funny though rather risky ; and
on another occasion, when he was being a little censorious,
she suddenly said : ' Do you know, Johmry, a man once
made a huge fortune by minding his own business/ It
took me some time to understand the point of this remark,
but once grasped, I said to myself : ' There's one for Master
Johnny I '
But a relation who really shared our life was a clergy-
man cousin, Hugo J. He lived in the next parish, always
ate his Sunday dinner with us, adored our parents, and I
really think spent all his spare time — and he was a busy
zealous priest — amusing us children. His draughtsman-
ship was quite above the average, and besides a celebrated
donkey-cart picture of which I shall speak later, we still
possess a water-colour sketch by him of the Bengal Horse
24
THE ISMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 25
Artillery charging a native regiment. A young officer in
spectacles, evidently my father, leads the charge, and is
slashing off a Sepoy's head in his stride. We used to ask
Papa with awe if this really happened, but he only chuckled
behind his Times, and we never got a definite reply.
Kind as he was to us, in those days I did not love Hugo
and I don't think he liked me. His was the type of mind
that delights in scoring off people, and humbling the pride
of conceited little girls ; also he had a habit I have always
resented of saying rather unpleasant things in a laughing
way. All the same, what with his inexhaustible talent
for inventing agitating games, drawing ' bogies,' and
immortalising our adventures in pen-and-ink sketches, he
certainly contributed immensely to our happiness, and the
rest of the family were devoted to him.
He it was who started in us the craze of illustrating our
correspondence, which brings me to yet another cousin, to
whom, when he went to India, Mary and I wrote adoring
letters by every mail. Postage to India was is. in those
days, and my effusions were long and profusely illustrated.
After months of correspondence our cousin at last wrote :
' I love your letters more and more, and don't a bit mind
their having only a penny stamp on them.' I rather think
each letter must have cost him about 55. and he was far
from well off.
Other relations were a niece of my father's whose
husband was quartered at Woolwich, and though he was
a delightful person with children, I chiefly remember our
being once sent over alone in the brougham to lunch with
them, on which occasion the doors were firmly tied up with
rope and the window-sashes plugged with cork, so that by
no possibility could we get out. Sometimes I think we
were as little fussed about as children could desire, but
recollections such as this seem to point the other way. The
truth is probably, that our parents inclined to give us plenty
of rope ; that we then took too much ; that aunts and
cousins presently stepped in with criticisms and expostula-
tions, whereupon the rope was for a while drawn very
tight, then relaxed again and so on. I have seen this happen
in many families ; the children know all about it and put
26 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
black marks against certain names which it takes years
and years to obliterate.
An infrequent and eagerly looked-for guest was my
father's cousin and contemporary Colonel O'H., an Irish-
man whose tremendous brogue gave extra point to his
tremendous language. A former Duchess of Atholl once
remarked : ' It is a pity swearing has gone out of fashion,
it was such an offset to conversation/ and certainly our
cousin did his best to keep that fashion alive. His wife,
who also had a strong but very pretty brogue, was of the
gentle type such men generally prefer, his daughter graceful,
languid, humorous, and very wide awake in a quiet way.
Everything connected with him was seen through the
usual Irish spectacles ; his avenue was the finest in Ireland,
his daughter had a prettier seat on horseback than any girl
in Ireland, her mare was the best bred animal in Ireland,
and so on. What most astonished us was his jovial freedom
with our parents, and when he pressed his favourite beverage,
' whisky dilooted with sherry ' on my father, thundering
out : ' What ? too strong for a seasoned old cask like you,
John ? Aren't ye ashamed, ye owld hypocrite ! ' we thought
the skies would fall. But my father merely laughed and
took it as a matter of course.
Most of this old gentleman's remarks were deliberately
intended to startle and cover his interlocutor with confusion,
but his periods were so rounded, and the whole thing put
through with such a swing, that it was impossible to take
offence. On one occasion he replied to our very genteel
governess who had mincingly enquired if he had not found
it very cold in Church : ' Ah ye sacrilegious wretch ! If
your religion doesn't warm ye Satan will ' — a very perfectly
constructed phrase, shot out as always with the force of
a bullet from a gun. In short he impressed me more than
all the rest of our relations put together.
My parents were very hospitable, and certain friends
were constant guests, including many old Indians whose
names I have since met in print, such as Sir Alfred Light,
a tremendous buck, middle aged, with stays and dyed
waxed moustaches, said to have been a great lady-killer ;
Sir Harry Tombs, Sir Herbert and Lady Edwardes, and
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 27
others. I bitterly regret not having cross-questioned my
father more persistently about India and the Mutiny.
Nowadays fresh records of that most horrible of all our
many wars are constantly appearing, and a queer feeling
rises in my heart when I come across certain names and
remember I looked on the faces of those who bore them
with a child's indifferent eyes.
But one amazing couple of old Indians who, being
relations, often came to Sidcup, and whose names figure
in no records whatever, were the A's. She was of the
great Z clan, with a huge oblong face the colour of brick
dust, and, but for her tow wig, was the image of her cele-
brated but not beautiful brother Lord Z. We were not
fond of her, but adopted her name for a frequent childish
complaint, ' scruatum internum,' with enthusiasm. Colonel
A., a pale insignificant man, with a sad, drooping, white
moustache and folds of yellow parchment skin hanging
about his jowl, was the least military looking figure con-
ceivable ; and I have since learned that his career had
been far from brilliant. Prototype of all hen-pecked
husbands, he was ordered to bed, ordered out of the room,
ordered to talk or be silent as the case might be, and ordered
out riding on a chestnut horse of his, called ' Alma/ that
ambled, and was supposed to be the only animal he could
sit on without falling off. As he rode he gently flailed
the horse's flank with a gold-headed bamboo cane, which
being hollow did no harm but produced an immense
noise ; you heard him coming nearly a mile off. He was
put on diet by his wife, and sometimes, she being at the
other end of the table, would trifle with the unpalatable
messes she insisted on having prepared for him ; but
presently the tow wig would bend forward across all inter-
vening obstacles, and a gruff, imperative voice uttered the
startling words : ' Cow, cow/ which is the Hindustani for
' eat/
This reminds me that when they began discussing matters
not fit for our ears, one of our parents, generally Papa,
would suddenly say something that sounded like ' barba
loaka sarmnay/ which means ' remember the children/
and continue the conversation in Hindustani, much to
28 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
our admiration. It seemed strange that Papa, who couldn't
speak a word of French or German, should be so glib in this
heathen jargon, but as he had spent about thirty years
of his life in India it was not surprising. My mother,
who was with him there about a third of that time, picked
up her Hindustani, as most women did in those days,
from the servants, the usual number of which in a
small household was thirty or forty ; according to my
father her command of the language was extensive but
ungrammatical.
I think we were fairly well off in the early Sidcup days,
especially after the death of my maternal grandmother,
whose only surviving child mother was, and who bequeathed
to her, among other things, the very fine jewels and lace
of which there will be dramatic mention presently.
' Bonnemaman ' as she was known to us in contra-
distinction to our very English ' Grandmama/ and whose
name I sometimes remember with a start was once Mrs.
Strath, lived in Paris and was a mysterious personality.
I never saw her myself, but there were legends of her having
taken to her bed soon after she was forty, partly because
of rheumatism, partly from ' foreign ' indolence, and
chiefly in order to receive innumerable doctors in becoming
caps and bed-j ackets. We gathered that she was considered
worldly and gifted, also that like all Straceys she had
great musical talent, and years afterwards it thrilled me
to learn she had known Chopin intimately. They said
she had been extremely handsome — as we could judge
for ourselves when her portrait by Jonquiere came into
my mother's possession — and one realised vaguely that
an unfortunate second marriage had taken place, it being
understood that the initials on the mother-of-pearl counters
we played round games with must not be alluded to because
they were those of Mr. Reece, the second husband. Louie
once told us that when a child she had been taken to see
her in Paris, and was sent out on to the balcony with a
small French boy, who at once began spitting on the heads
of passers-by ; when suddenly beautiful * Aunt Emma '
shot out and boxed his ears as Louie never saw ears boxed
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 29
before or since. Later she remembers an awe-inspiring
peep of her ill in bed, all white lace and cherry-coloured
ribbons ; the room was darkened and one went on tiptoe.
I recollected these details, because anything like a mystery
rouses a child's interest.
One morning, some time in the sixties, a telegram was
handed to my mother under the acacia tree ; she fainted,
and we learned that Bonnemaman was dead. After that
I forgot all about her, till, again during the genealogical
craze, I came upon some rather curious correspondence.
If she, as is evident, was imprudent in money matters,
Mr. Reece was nothing better than an adventurer, but
she adored him and quarrelled with her relations on his
account. These must have been odious to a degree, for
in one rather piteous letter she says it really was not kind
of Aunt So and So to put about in England that she had
large cupboards built in her bedroom in order to conceal
lovers ; an inspection of the apartment, she adds, would
show that the only cupboard large enough ' for such a
wicked purpose ' is in the dining-room. There is much
discussion about raising money between her and a blunt,
kindly man of the name of Guthrie, possibly a trustee and
I think a radical, who writes a beautiful hand. One of his
letters shows what people who foolishly preferred foreign
countries to England had to put up with in those days,
and is also so full of character and genuine good feeling
that I cannot refrain from giving it.
September 10, 1837.
' Pardon, my dear friend, for the coarse terms in which
it appears I addressed you in my last letter ; the line of
my pursuits, and my habits altogether, require me rather
to speak the facts as they rise to my mind, and I believe
I study far too little the conveying my thoughts with the
courtesy due to the party addressed. I must go abroad
by and by to study the Embroidery of Language and
Sentiment, but in the meanwhile I cannot honestly retract
a word of what I previously expressed. I disapprove
decidedly of your having to borrow from any man ; the
fact itself is sufficient, I think, to prove Indiscretion. As
30 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
to the Respectability I shall say nothing ; you would not
have the contest in your own bosom were you not conscious
of your own Wrong.
' You speak more to the point, in my view, when you
hold cheap your own personal Sacrifices, if by any such
you could redeem your independence. Is this a bit-by-bit
Tory-like feeling, or can you come it strong like a radical
reformer ?
* You say that not one of your wealthy kindred can or
will help you. Then help yourself. Accept the situation
offered to Madame Guithart, put Nina1 to school with
Amy Loo at Miss Coultons. I will with pleasure find the
money for her charges. Take Tiny with you to Jersey and
your family is provided for. In twelve months you will
again be a Person of Fortune, and you will have done
nothing you need be otherwise than proud of. Nina would
be greatly improved in health and education. For I hold
that French Education, however elegant and agreeable
it may be, wants the honesty, the principle, the English
feeling which gives an English woman a Caste and
Superiority over the women of all other countries, and
which your family run the risk of losing from their long
residence in France in Foreign Society.
'My suggestion has nothing but common sense to
recommend it. The idea of such a plan will horrify and
humiliate the proud feelings of all your family, but still
in Moral Honesty it is unimpeachable, and in all its Con-
sequences would, after 12 months, be beneficial to you and
yours. Most particularly to Nina, in whose welfare I feel
a very warm interest, and not less in your own, my good
Lady, though we may have different ways of proving it.
I do not impeach your Code, only I claim a right to think
for myself ; it is not worth your while quarrelling with
me because we may differ. You can put my letter in the
Fire and thus will end this my d — d friendly interference.
' Believe me always yours very truly,
'D. CHARLES GUTHRIE/
To this letter was added a very unmitigated postscript
1 My mother.
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 31
addressed to the husband, in the course of which the writer
says :
' If the unkindness of your own family and her friends
should compel you to mount a 3 legged stool, or even to
break stones for a season, I should say that if you thereby
redeem your Freedom and Independence you will be
comparatively a proud and happy man, and every sensible
person would applaud your firmness and decision of
character/
Finally he declines an offer of hospitality in terms which
suggest that his correspondent had been insane enough to
try and borrow money of the writer : ' Otherwise it has
always been a pleasure to give or receive kindness of your
wife's family as our forefathers mutually delighted to do
by each other — and I believe neither owed the other any-
thing on the score/
I found too an enchanting letter to her from a French
friend who seems to have lent Mr. Reece 3000 francs
on interest. No doubt this is the affair alluded to by
Mr. Guthrie, and one finds a clue to the personal sacrifices
poor Bonnemaman was prepared to make in the following
extract :
' Quant au sacrifice que vous voulez faire pour satisfaire
a cette dette, je ne Taccepte et ne Taccepterai jamais dans
la forme que vous me proposez. Non, mon estimable
amie, ce n'est pas moi qui vous depouillerai de ces cachemirs
et de ces bijoux que vous aimez bien, me dites-vous. Je
ne me donnerai jamais le honteux relief de vous avoir
prive de ce qui vous est agreable ; d'autant plus que ce
n'est pas moi qui vous aurais reduit a une si facheuse
situation/
To make up for this dig at the husband he speaks of happy
days spent in their society. . . .
*. . . grace a votre esprit, vos talents, et ce caractere si
aimable et rare que vous savez porter dans toutes les
32 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
relations d'un commerce si delicieux. Moi je ne les oublie
pas, et il feront encore les delices de mes vieux jours, malgre
tous les regrets qu'ils me causeront. Mais, vous le savez,
il est des peines, des chagrins, qui ont encore de la douceur,
et j'en trouverai une grande, surtout, dans Tassurance que
j'ai d'etre toujours digne de votre amitie. . . . Adieu!
Adieu ! — vous rappelez- vous ? Cetait votre maniere de
prendre conge ! . . /
Then there is another man friend who writes from
Calabria and is called Paris — a name of which no doubt,
if they ever heard it, the family made capital. This letter
presents the husband in quite a new light, as one ' whose
sound comprehensive understanding, whose deep and ex-
tensive knowledge of men and things, ought to make him
eminent in the career of letters he now proposes to take
up/ Written in the April before the Guthrie correspon-
dence, I imagine optimistic Bonnemaman saw wealth
flowing towards them through literary channels ; the
cashmere shawls and jewels were not yet in jeopardy. In
this letter a reproach is levelled against her which delights
me : ' I am sure you overrate other women, judging by
yourself/ and elsewhere she is told that her intimacy with
a certain Madame de Lyris, elderly and far from elegant,
though, the writer is convinced, generous and noble-minded
at bottom, speaks volumes for the goodness of her heart.
' Young and beautiful as you are yourself, you know how
to appreciate parfum though the vase be old-fashioned and
unbeautiful/ Paris seems to have received a poem from
his correspondent at a critical moment which, suddenly
found among his papers, makes him suddenly see her . . .
' a delusion that faded away with grief/ . . .
Given the ridiculous notions that prevailed even in my
youth on the subject of ' French immorality/ one can
imagine the construction put by the family on these friend-
ships, yet I feel convinced from internal evidence that
there was nothing wrong.
Tied up with these and other letters — mostly disagreeable
ones from near relations — and drafts of her replies, which
though dignified are rather funny, I found countless
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 33
conundrums, charades, and Elegant Extracts in French,
English, and Italian, copied out in her own handwriting.
One of her most stately drafts concerns the disobligingness
of her brother-in-law Sir Henry Durrant, who could not
find the time to write out a ' quadrille ' which had taken
her fancy while staying with him in Norfolk ; and on the
other side of a still more uncompromising draft are some
cantering verses with the refrain : ' And I am the Gipsy
King/ I do not know whether she or my mother is
responsible for this odd inter-marriage of documents. As
' Paris ' remarks : ' Nina promises to take after you/ and
it is very like both of them.
Bonnemaman seems to have followed her candid friend
Guthrie's advice and retired to Jersey for a while, taking
both children with her, but after the death of the youngest
little girl the family insisted on exporting an English
governess, in order that my mother might have ' some
chance of being brought up like an English young lady.'
Finally the stepfather became so impossible that there
was a judicial separation, but much to her relations' disgust
Bonnemaman declined to come home and face ' I told you
so/ and lived and died in France. She was considered to
have lost caste by her second marriage, and as separations
were looked upon as disgraceful in those days, no matter
where the fault lay, her situation amply accounts for her
having been thus shrouded in mystery. Indeed Alice
remembers that some time after her death, my mother,
ever unconventional, having casually remarked : ' I wonder
if my step-father is alive ? ' Papa looked greatly annoyed
at such a subject being mentioned before the child.
Such was the woman who was hushed up before her
grandchildren as a sort of family disgrace ! After reading
these letters, especially hers to my mother, I have come
to the conclusion that poor Bonnemaman, gifted, warm-
hearted, impulsive, and thoroughly ' injudicious/ would
have been my favourite relation.
Not long after her death came the tragedy of all old
Indians, the failure of the Agra Bank, and my father lost
VOL, I. D
34 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
most of his savings ; thus in early days I knew the chill
cast on a cheerful household by financial worries. Either
then or earlier he made heavy sacrifices to ensure each
daughter that should remain single £40 a year. As five
out of the six married I am the only one to profit by the
arrangement, and the title under which I claim this pension
would dignify a far smaller sum. According to the India
Office I am a ...
BENGAL MILITARY ORPHAN.
MAJOR-GENERAL J. H. SMYTH, C.B.
(The Author's Father, aged about 70.)
CHAPTER IV
MY FATHER
MY father, a fine example of what is fortunately a not
uncommon type, was one of fourteen children, six of whom
were alive when I was young. Tall, upright, strongly
built, with the pleasant, open, very English countenance
we see exaggerated in the portraits of Mr. Punch, his
bearing was equally suggestive of kindliness and authority.
Having to wear spectacles slightly interfered, to my mind,
with his military appearance, but in his Horse Artillery
uniform, with its masses of gold braid and shaggy busby,
he was a fine, soldierly looking man — and in all costumes
the picture of a gentleman.
To give an idea how the England of those days flung
her youth into the world to find their level, he went out
to India at the age of fifteen, he and his brother having
been presented with commissions in the Bengal Army by
their uncle Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, and a year later was
responsible for roads, transport, communications, law and
order, life and death, in a district as big as Yorkshire.
There is an anecdote connected with his later Indian period
which exactly characterises him — one for whom duty and
obedience were paramount, but who was capable of trans-
cending the letter of the law on occasion. During the
Mutiny certain men of his battery who had joined the
mutineers were caught and condemned to be hanged in
their officer's presence. Their senior, a sergeant, the best
native soldier he ever had under him, advanced, saluted,
and said : ' Sahib, you often told me I did my duty to your
satisfaction ; grant me one last favour, let me die by your
own hand/ . . . ' And by Jove/ said my father, ' though
35
36 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
our orders were to humiliate the mutineers in every way, I
did as he asked and hanged him myself/
When quite a young man he became what is well called
a martyr to gout ; not even a busy life and limitless sport,
including boar-hunting (which he hated to hear called ' pig-
sticking '), could work off the floods of champagne that flowed
in India, so to speak, on the top of my grandfather's hogs-
heads of port. But between the attacks, right up to the
end of his life, his vitality and cheerfulness, and what he
chiefly laid store by, his usefulness, were unimpaired.
No man was ever more loved and respected. Single-
hearted, shrewd, with great knowledge of the world, partly
innate, partly acquired, the watchword of his life was duty,
which he pronounced ' dooty,' and after leaving the army
he threw himself into county work and made his character
felt. He often remarked : ' If I had nothing to keep me
busy outside the house what a nuisance I should be in it/
and was generally determined to wear out, not rust out.
They always said he was first-rate on the Bench, but once
he astonished his brother magistrates by sharply repri-
manding a young policeman, who was boasting how he had
hidden behind a hedge and caught a man riding a bicycle
on the footpath. ' Then you did very wrong/ said my
father, ' to go sneaking about laying traps. You're there
to prevent people breaking the law, not to hide and tempt
them to break it ! '
He combined with his idea of service a simple piety he
did not speak of but which his whole life was founded on,
and he never went to sleep without reading in one of the
little books at his bedside.
He was a keen politician — Conservative of course —
and Chairman of the County Conservative Union, but
advanced in his ideas. Long before the days of Tariff
Reform he was in favour of a tax on raw material, and
even advocated the enfranchisement of women, a theory
no one else in our world took seriously. I remember his
pointing out that three-quarters of the land in the parish
was owned by women, and that it was monstrous these
should be denied the suffrage. True, I think he was con-
vinced that propertied females would vote his own way,
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 37
but the injustice and unwisdom of their being voteless was
what pre-occupied him ; no one believed more firmly that
fair play is the only thing that pays in the long run.
I remember once when I was a schoolgirl telling him
I had asked Mr. Pursey, the cobbler, why all shoemakers
are radicals, and had found his reply ' Well you see, Miss,
we has time to think ' rather interesting. But Papa was
not at all impressed and said he had never heard such in-
fernal nonsense in his life. He was very tolerant by nature
and disposed to hear both sides of a question ; still con-
victions are convictions, and one day, when he was well
over seventy, he remarked confidentially : ' I am getting
an old man, but upon my word it is very difficult for me
even now to believe a radical can be an honest man.' He
always took the chair at political meetings in the neighbour-
hood and nine out of ten of his speeches used to end with
an exordium to his hearers to ' do your duty by your Queen,
your country, and your God/ We children, and I daresay
our neighbours, used to look forward to this peroration with
some amusement, yet it was uttered so simply and earnestly
that it always ended by impressing even me afresh.
Towards the end of his life modern ideas were beginning
to undermine the respect automatically paid to the gentry,
but no one protested at his habit, when Chairman, of
silencing objections or awkward questions by rattling his
stick furiously on the table and declaring the motion
carried unanimously. People just laughed and let ' the
General's ' high-handed methods pass unchallenged, such
was his overflowing geniality.
He was an unqualified admirer of the British Constitu-
tion, and though freer than anyone it is possible to con-
ceive from snobbishness, had a delightful old-fashioned
respect for Royalty ; if in our haste we stuck a postage-
stamp upside down he was seriously annoyed ; ' It is
disrespectful to your Sovereign/ he would say. For dis-
tinguished personalities he had the same quality of reverence.
I remember an incident that amused me even then, when
my sense of humour was immature. To his thinking Glad-
stone was the Devil, and hearing that great man was coming
to speak at Aldershot he remarked : ' If I see the beast I
38 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
shan't take any notice of him/ We afterwards discovered
he was by chance on the platform when Gladstone stepped
out of the train. ' And what did you do ? ' asked my
mother. ' Well/ was the reply, ' as a matter of fact I
believe I raised my hat/ All the same he was delighted
when I evaded a suggestion from a daughter of Gladstone's,
a neighbour, to come over one day and sing to him. Alas !
young people are terribly earnest, and I never had another
chance of seeing the G.O.M. at close quarters.
Between my father and me there was never strong
sympathy ; perhaps he recognised from the first a stubborn
will that was eventually to triumph over his. I think too
the artistic temperament was distasteful to him, though it
was that of my mother, to whom he was deeply attached.
Once when Bob was a child Papa found him busy painting,
and flew into such a rage at a boy's indulging in such a
pursuit, that he swept the whole paraphernalia on to the
floor, and Bob thought he was going to be cuffed.
Yet the odd thing was that in some ways he himself
had artistic instincts ; Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and
other poets of his youth he read aloud admirably, and I was
always struck with the musical cadence in his voice when
he came to certain sonorous phrases in Family Prayers.
Again no one had a keener enjoyment of the beauties of
nature, but none of this helped him to see in me anything
but the rebel I certainly was.
His excellent delivery of stately English prose came in
well reading the Lessons in Church, but he was not a reader
gifted with presence of mind, and arriving at certain strong
unvarnished statements in the Old Testament, usually
bowdlerised or omitted, would cough and stumble and
get into terrible trouble, much to the delight of the con-
gregation. My mother often entreated him to look at the
chapter quietly at home first, but this his pride forbad.
His versions, too, of some of the crack-jaw biblical names
were sometimes remarkable, but there was a simplicity
about him which carried off anything and everything. I
can see him now, walking slowly up the aisle to the reading
desk, sublimely ignorant of the fact that his frock coat was
buttoned awry.
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 39
On another occasion, when, because of the heat, the
Church door stood open, the congregation breathlessly
watched a new fox terrier of ours come up the aisle, its
mind full of misgivings, and eventually with shyly wagging
tail begin snuffing his ankles. He went on reading, gave
a kick to the right, went on again, gave a kick to the left,
and then said in furious and audible undertones : ' Take
the brute out, somebody/ Which somebody did ; but
his anger at this incident lasted all day ; it is the only time
I remember him doing anything approaching sulking.
As years went on he got more and more gouty, sticking
manfully to tasks other men would have abandoned long
ago ; but when the time came for giving in, he did so with
perfect sweetness of temper. I used to think my mother
rather cruel to him about his growing infirmities, but they
understood each other very well and he did not resent it.
There was an institution that on her birthday he should
drive her out himself ; but when it came to his being obliged
to wind the reins round his weak, gouty wrists, she could
not refrain from urging he should let the coachman take
them. By this time his hands were so covered with big
chalkstones, that our old friend Sir Evelyn Wood said to
shake hands with him was like exchanging greetings with
a mailed knight, but to the end he persisted in carving
chickens and ducks, however tough. My mother would
protest her helping was more like dog's meat than anything
else, to which he would reply : ' Well : cut off what you
don't want and send it back/ but give up carving he would
not.
His great expression for actions or theories he approved
was * right and proper/ For instance I remember one
Ash Wednesday when my mother, who felt lazy, said she
didn't think she'd go to Church because it was so cold ;
driven from this position by his statistics concerning the
thermometer, she added thoughtfully . . . ' and then I
don't like the Commination Service/ ' You mayn't like
it/ he retorted, ' but its right and proper, and you ought
to hear it/ He adored it himself, waggling his head more
and more approvingly as curse after curse was reeled off.
He certainly was choleric in the old-fashioned military
40 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
' damn-your-eyes ' style, and if a footman dropped any-
thing would call out angrily, even at our grandest dinner-
parties : ' God gave you two hands, you fool, and why
the devil don't you use them ? ' — a strange reproof, for
surely dishes cannot be handed round on that principle,
but I liked the phrase and hope the footman did. One
proceeding of his greatly delighted our tennis guests ;
if they stayed too long he would hide behind a big laurel
bush near the court and ring the dinner bell violently by
way of a hint ; some would linger on purpose to provoke
this demonstration.
When his own family fell under his displeasure, betrayed
by the verbal unreadiness I referred to, and which excite-
ment and anger greatly increased, he would mix up his
parts of speech in the most fantastic manner. Once when
Bob, then a child of five or six, was teasing the dog Kitty,
Papa exclaimed in violent irritation : ' Now Kitty, if you
make Bobby bark I'll brain the poker.' Or again when
a chance cab, after leaving someone at our house, agreed
to take someone else to the station if not kept waiting,
he bellowed up the stairs : ' Come along : no last words :
the cab may fly any moment/ In my youth the wine was
always locked up by the family after meals, and one of his
best ' coq-d-l'dne,' as my mother, whose delight they were,
called them, was : * Now then Bob, lick up the locker .
well, I mean lick up the shutter.' But it was in the tightly
packed Sunday landau, a situation calculated to rasp
nerves all round, that this mood would most often over-
take him. I remember his saying to Nelly and Bob, who
were grumbling at being squeezed to death : ' Well if
you two infernally thin people can't sit five in a carriage
I don't know who can,' and as we drew up at the Church
door he added : ' Now Mama, you come first, so just get
out of the window.'
Some of the things he said in his public capacity used
to leak out ; how he advised the Bench to kill two stones
with one bird, and informed a Committee that the pollution
of the Blackwater, a filthy little local river, was mainly
caused by the ' vast quantity of vegetable marrows flowing
down from the hills.' But in private life he never beat
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 41
his advice to the mama of a rheumatic daughter : ' You
ought to put her under a masher/ Once started on the
wrong path, his conversation would be on these lines for
the rest of the day, and my mother would laugh till she
cried.
In spite of his insinuating on occasion, as most elderly
men do, that he had been anything but a milksop in his
youth, I cannot think he was ever wild, but he certainly
had a weakness for what he called ' a bit of a scamp/
and always maintained his best subalterns were in that
category. We noticed, too, that he was more than indulgent
to members of the other sex suspected of frailty ; so much
so that Mary, a particularly favourite married daughter,
once said in fun : ' I wonder what you'd do if / went off
with some other man ? ' Thereupon he became angrier
than she had ever seen him, got up, stamped about the
room, and finally went out into the garden in a fury, to
reappear five minutes later, poke his head in at the door,
and say with terrific emphasis : 'I'd curse ye ! ' Then
the door was slammed and he was not seen again for several
hours. Such is the logic of the British paterfamilias.
As time went on expenses increased, income diminished,
and his children used to think he was rather optimistic
and happy-go-lucky about his affairs. I now question
if this was so, anyhow I remember being very much im-
pressed— I was about twenty-one at the time — by the
quiet good-humour with which he said one day : ' I'm
not such an old fool as you all think/
His one idea in later years was to rush his six almost
portionless daughters into matrimony, and ship his only
remaining boy, Bob, off to India ; and with one solitary
exception, myself, these plans were realised. During his
last illness he insisted on the summary in the Times and
the leading articles being read to him long after he was
past following their drift attentively, and died the death
of a good man at seventy-nine, having survived my mother
three years. No better testimony to him exists than
the simple words our young rector, Mr. Basset, who had
worked with him in the parish as curate for many years,
spoke in Frimley Church the Sunday after the funeral :
42 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
' I cannot finish my sermon without referring to the loss
we have sustained in this parish during the last few days.
One who was well known to us all, one who was a constant
attendant in this Church and read the Lessons here for
us for many years, has finished his earthly life.
' He had had a long and eventful career ; his youth and
early manhood were spent in troublous times. After
many years of active work abroad he did not seek his
well-earned leisure in retirement as many would have
done, but retiring from the Army he at once took an active
part in the welfare of the parish he had made his home.
We all know the zeal and energy he showed as magistrate,
as county councillor, as school manager, as a member of
the various committees he served on — a zeal that those
much younger than he often wondered at, admired, and
almost envied.
' Whatever he undertook he put his whole energy into
it ; he was never indifferent, he was always hopeful and
enthusiastic. His opinion was ever listened to, but he
was one of those men who are open to conviction. If he
could help anyone in this parish or district his services
were always freely given, and many can remember his kind
help when advice was required or some wrong had to be
righted.
' At public meetings he always spoke out his mind boldly
and fearlessly. It seemed impossible for him to swerve
from what he felt to be his duty, and from what he thought
right, whatever might be the results. But as many of us
know, his power lay in his personal character. In many
ways it was unique. Hasty and quick in temperament,
yet he was kind and considerate — beneath all a gentle and
loving heart, almost a child's. If anger found a place
there it soon passed into forgiveness ; he could not cherish
ill-feeling : it did not exist in his nature.
' It was perhaps only a coincidence, but yet remarkable,
that the last time he read the Lessons in this Church was
at the close of the Christian year. The Lessons he read
were the last in the Calendar. Some noticed then that
age and work were telling on him, and that the very words,
usually so well read by him, seemed to apply to him that
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON
43
soon the silver cord was to be loosed, the golden bowl
broken, the pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel
broken at the cistern. . . .
' He has now passed to his rest, a good Christian, a kind
neighbour, a true friend, leaving behind him an example
that we should do well to follow/ — 52. Peter's, Frimley,
AprilS, 1894.
CHAPTER V
MY MOTHER
To produce anything that gave a real idea of my mother's
physiognomy was beyond the art of any known photo-
grapher ; in the same way I half despair of describing,
or rather making live again, her strange, difficult, but most
loveable personality.
It was a case of baffled genius and injudicious bringing
up combined. Whether Bonnemaman settled in Paris
before, or only after, her second marriage I cannot say, but
in spite of all the family said and did to prevent it my
mother was educated in France, and at that time French
was more her language than English. Children are always
incurious about their parents' early days, and I never
knew much about hers, but when a child myself I was
deeply struck by her account of a vanished feature in the
Champs Elysees, typical of a gay simplicity no longer
met with in this grave world.
It appears there was a path leading under a creeper-
covered wire archway to a wooden hut in a shrubbery ;
from the archway swung a picture of a gentleman in green
peg-top trousers, who was raising his hat to a lady in a
pink skirt and a hat with drooping ostrich feathers, and
remarking, according to the legend below :
' Madame, il faut que je vous dise adieu,
Un devoir pressant m'appelle en certain lieu/
I also recall her telling us, that in the revolution of
'48 her mother's windows were barricaded with mattresses,
and that on the wall of the house opposite there was a
great splash of blood. Some years previously, owing
44
MRS. J. H. SMYTH
(The Author's Mother, aged about 55.)
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 45
to the unsatisfactory step-father and other reasons, it had
been settled that she should live at Rackheath, near
Norwich, the home of her childless uncle, Sir Edward
Stracey, and I gather this very handsome ' frenchified '
girl, who sang exquisitely, was looked upon as a dangerous
interloper by less brilliant relations.
At that time my grandfather Smyth was Director of
the Norwich Branch of the Bank of England, and thus it
came that she met my father, who was home on leave.
The wedding took place from Rackheath in 1848, and in
acknowledgment of her offices as mistress of his house
her uncle presented her with some very fine diamonds,
which, when travelling, she persisted in carrying about
on her person for safety ; sometimes in a brown paper
parcel, mysteriously tied on somewhere, sometimes sewn
into a garment, but never in a dressing-case. These
diamonds were not entailed, but the family had concluded
they would go with the place, and one gathers that feeling
ran high on the subject. This cannot have mattered much
to her, for my father carried her off directly after their
wedding to India, where she stayed, as I said, till shortly
before the outbreak of the Mutiny.
Indian society was a small affair in those days, and
what with her wit and gaiety, her almost Southern beauty,
and her music, she appears to have been a sort of queen
out there. And judging by later years, when we wished
he would put his foot down oftener, my father may possibly
have been an over-indulgent husband.
She really was extraordinarily un-English, whether
because she was educated in France, or because her grand-
mother was a certain Mademoiselle de Lagarde — according
to her portrait a wooden-faced young lady, with a huge
miniature of a Protestant clergyman, her father no doubt,
plastered on to her flat chest. The quick vivid gestures,
for instance, were foreign, and I always thought were
eyed by my father's sisters with some disfavour on that
account ; but above all her way of looking at things was
utterly the reverse of what is called insular. I remember
a little conversation between us, the finale of which caused
one of my aunts to ' bridle/
46 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
MOTHER (heaping her plate with fried parsley). — 'I do
love parsley ! '
ETHEL. — ' Yes, fried, but not stuck raw in the middle
of one's eggs and bacon.'
MOTHER. — ' O, I like it even as an ornament ; it makes
a dish look appetising/
ETHEL (sententiously) . — ' Do you know I have come to
the conclusion I don't like anything that isn't founded on
common sense/
MOTHER (impulsively). — ' And I infinitely prefer things
that are not founded on common sense ! '
Against English conventionality she was, of course,
in secret rebellion, but did her best to conform, as the
following fact will surely prove. One of our annual excite-
ments was the arrival of ' Rouillard's box/ a big case sent
every Christmas by some old friends of Bonnemaman's,
containing French books for children, pralines, and the
celebrated barley-sugar that cost me a caning. Pere
Rouillard was a sculptor, the chief pride of whose life
was some bronze eagles he cast for the Tuileries, and which
I suppose melted away in 1871. The books were illustrated
of course, and when the scene was a domestic interior,
a certain piece of crockery was always visible under the
bed ; this, in deference to English prejudices, my mother
would transform with a broad-nibbed pen into a very
unsymmetrical top hat, the improbability of the father
of the family keeping his haut de forme in such a place
troubling her not at all. I still have a fascinating picture
book showing how a tall plump fairy taught le petit Martin
Landor his music, aided by slimmer fairies whose heads
are crotchets and quavers, and who perform athletic feats
on rows of telegraph wires which turn out to be the staves.
These lessons seem to have been given at night time by
means of dreams and visions, and poor Martin is always
either sitting up in bed staring with all his eyes, or being
lifted clean out of it by the tall fairy. Thus on every other
page is a detail brought into harmony with insular notions
of decency by my amazing mother.
To describe her as she was when I remember her best
— about the age of the detestable portrait given here, the
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 47
only one extant — she was of middle height and was said
to have had a beautiful figure in her youth ; even in old
age she was far from unshapely, and her arms and shoulders
were still good to look upon. Her hair was once coal
black, but I think she took early in life to bandeaux with
curls over the forehead, which could be trusted not to
turn grey. As her complexion was a warm brunette,
slightly helped out by art, the black hair never looked dis-
crepant, though I used to urge her to change it for the soft
grey arrangement she admired so in Lady B ; in fact
she used to complain I was a ' regular memento mori.'
Her eyes were her best feature, large, dark brown, melting
eyes that Louie told me made them call her in her youth
' the ox-eyed Venus ' — the eyes of an artist, of someone
with a loving heart — and even as an elderly woman she
was considered very handsome, though she can never
have been as handsome as her second daughter. But on
the other hand it was one of the most expressive faces I
have ever seen, and as her moods were many and her
passions violent, he who ran might read much on that
face.
If ever anyone was meant for social life it was she ;
I used to wonder at the change that came over her in
society, more especially at her gracious hospitality, the
perfection of good manners, in her own house. She adored
entertaining, and though I used to reproach her in times
of financial crisis for her ' love of dress/ I was obliged to
admit that, to use the charming French phrase, elle portait
bien la toilette.
This even in later life ; but how I wish I had known
her when she was young ! One day after her death, Lady
Sydney, whom we seldom saw in post-Sidcup days, met
Alice in a shop and began talking of mother, saying that
when first they knew her, she and Lord Sydney had agreed
that never had they come across such a brilliant being.
When she dined with them, all other guests, whether English
or foreign, became colourless ; not because of her beauty
and charm, her wit and vivacity, said Lady Sydney — these
things one had met with in others to an equal degree-
it was the unique personality. ' Had your mother married
48 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
a diplomat/ she added, ' she would have been known and
acclaimed all over Europe.' And having passed a good
deal of my life abroad, I feel sure this is true.
She had a great gift for languages, and besides French
and Hindustani knew German, Italian and Spanish.
Though she had visited none of the countries in which
these languages are spoken except France and India, nor
had any practice since her schoolroom days, when occasion
demanded off she would start with fluency and idiomatic
correctness, not to speak of an accent she owed to her
musical ears.
For her strongest gift was undoubtedly music ; she
was in fact one of the most naturally musical people I
have ever known ; how deeply so I found out in after
years when she came to Leipzig to see me, and I watched
her listening for the first time to a Beethoven symphony,
— watched her face softening, tightening, relaxing again
as each beauty I specially counted on went home. Old
friends maintained that when she was young her singing
would have melted a stone, which I can well believe ; all
the warm, living qualities that made her so loveable must
have got into it. When I knew her she had almost lost
her voice, but enough remained to judge of its strangely
moving timbre. Later on she loved to hear me sing, and
it saddens me to think how seldom I gratified her when
we were by ourselves ; but I always was lazy about singing.
She read at sight very well and her playing of dance
music was gorgeously rhythmic. I can see her now, pince-
nez on nose, rapping out the beloved old ' Lancers/ leading
up to the curtsey, gluing us for ever so long to the floor,
and sending us flying back to our places with incredible
accent and go. One used to wonder if the children she
played for noticed how different it was to the performance
of their own mamas, but I greatly doubt it.
The same dramatic instinct made her cross-question
us in what we thought the oddest way about incidents
of our walks ; ' Tell me exactly what happened when you
met ; did you bow first or did he take off his hat first ? '
It all had to be visualised.
In those days, Heaven help me ! I believed, as men told
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 49
us, that feminine quickness of intelligence was a sign of
superficiality, that it was far cleverer to painfully count
up the fingers of each hand than to see at a glance that
five and five make ten. I was therefore not as much
impressed as I should be now by the extreme rapidity of
her mental operations ; but I soon noticed that though
her judgment on impersonal matters was markedly sound,
it was quite another thing when she herself was in question.
Many of her children have inherited this very common
weakness.
As I said, she had the warmest of hearts, and if violent
in temper, was a generous forgiver and forget ter. But
alas ! capacity for affection and for suffering go hand in
hand, especially if you have a vivid imagination and neither
instincts nor habits to control it with, which was her case ;
indeed, whenever I think of her, David Copperfield's phrase
about his ' undisciplined heart ' comes into my mind.
No mother ever tormented herself more strangely. After
saying goodnight to us, apparently in a happy frame of
mind, perhaps she would not fall asleep at once ; and then,
as only too often happens with the hypersensitive, the passed
day would shine upon her pillow, breeding many woes. Mole-
hills transformed themselves into mountains of pain and des-
pair, and at cockcrow, as it seemed to us, a piteous Odyssey
would begin from one bedroom to another — we used to
call it ' Morning Calls ' — and in each was recited a list of
wrongs and cruelties suffered by her at our hands, slights,
veiled rudenesses, or ridicule, the whole thing as often as not
wholly imaginary. Explanations were seldom of any use
for even in peaceful moments her own point of view tended
to obscure that of the other person, — so much so that we
often chaffed her about her style of relating a conversation :
' So he said something or other, and I said " not at all
that's where you're quite wrong. ..."
O ! those morning calls, and O ! the pitilessness of
youth ! . . . . Speaking for myself, I fully realised the
intense misery of her heart and sometimes met it sympa-
thetically, but more often with impatience and anger.
The whole thing was so unreasonable, besides which one
wanted to go to sleep again.
VOL. I. E
50 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
For these and other reasons she was always to me a
tragic figure. Alice, the favourite daughter, who knew her
seven years before I did, in younger brighter days, thinks
her nature was at bottom a happy one, but the self -torment-
ing strain must always have been there, waiting to assert
itself when youth should wane. She certainly had a great
sense of humour and her laugh was wonderfully merry
to the last ; indeed there were touches of lightness in her
that sometimes astonished me. In the midst of a scene
of despair, for instance, the arrival of a new bonnet from
Paris, or a bunch of roses handed in at the window by the
gardener, would transform her at once into the most
cheerful of beings. Children are generally little prigs, and
this trait, which I now find wholly charming and touching,
used to affect me not quite agreeably.
When she was well and happy her talk sparkled with
subtle turns and comments — I'esprit Jran$ais in English
garb — and nothing used to infuriate me more than the stolid
faces of the rural swine for whose benefit these pearls were
lavished, but she herself took it with smiling indifference.
To see things wittily and express them felicitously came
naturally to her, and she no more looked for applause than
would a swallow circling and darting about over a meadow.
All the same this lack of response must have depressed her
unconsciously, for I know that my everlasting delight in
the point of her conversation gave her immense pleasure.
In 1875 came the great sorrow of her life, the death of
Johnny. This eldest son, of whom his masters predicted
great things, had a slight hunting accident ; his horse
swerved jumping a fence and his knee caught in a bough.
That was all ; neither of them fell, but he went back to
Westminster with a slight limp. Perhaps it was only a
tiny displacement that with the help of X-rays might have
been located and easily put right ; as it was he was pulled
about and tortured by surgeons, and taken to Wildbad
with no result. Then came the slow agony of realising that
all schemes for his future must be abandoned ; at last he
took to a wheeled chair and died two and a half years after
his accident.
Never in all this time did I hear my mother say an angry
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 51
word to Johnny or even before him ; he disliked scenes of
all kinds and however close on the brink of the tempest
mood she might be, the slightest sign of distress from him
would calm her in an instant. I used to wonder at this
and might have guessed from it how she loved him and
what his death meant to her. But as he had always been
inclined to snub me I had no particular devotion for him
myself, moreover was wrapped up as always in my own
affairs. Thus it came that I never realised till after her
own death, that with him most of the sunshine went out
of her life.
She was very fond of my father, and always maintained
that at a march past no one saluted the flagstaff with a
gesture more noble and graceful than he, at the head of
the Artillery Brigade ! But latterly I think she was a
little jealous of his popularity. He appreciated good
cooking and had one or two lady friends who loved to give
the dear General lunch on his way to and from his county
work. When possible he said nothing about these little
treats, but sometimes the hostess would innocently let the
cat out of the bag, and then . . . well, then I first began
to realise that the most salient characteristic of the British
male is not moral courage.
Apart from such occasional and definite twinges of
jealousy, I daresay she may have envied him his simple
sunny friendliness. As can be imagined if I have described
her well, she had any amount of charm when she chose to
exercise it, but not the quality I mean, which seldom goes
with genius. Possibly she knew certain gifts are denied
to the gifted, but if so would not have reconciled herself to
the fact.
In later years guests who came to stay were not a success.
The first day they were made more than welcome, but
we knew the pace could not last, and presently, at mother's
request, we were putting about legends calculated to relieve
the situation. The usual one was bad news just received,
which would cause them on their part to discover their
presence was urgently required elsewhere. Visitors whom
it was impossible, for some reason or other, to dislodge
prematurely, must sometimes have felt they had outstayed
52 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
their welcome, I fear ; and even when visits were short she
so wore herself out entertaining, that after dinner only
one idea was left, a furious longing for bed. But it was
thought uncivil to make a move before 10.30, our canonical
hour, and this was always the last straw.
We used to watch with amusement the annual duel
between her and one of her cousins, a shrewd pleasant
woman with a flow of conversation I have seldom heard
equalled, whose hour for retiring was unfortunately n.
When the clock struck 10.30 my mother would say : ' Ah !
there's the clock,' and begin spearing her crochet together ;
but the other considered it was ' dear Nina's ' place to yield
to her guest's preferences, and the stream flowed smoothly
on. It was very agreeable talk, but what is the use of being
even brilliant if people want to go to bed ? At length
when the hour struck she would say in a mild surprised
voice : ' Is that eleven o'clock already ? ' and slowly roll up
her own knitting. Never once did my mother carry her
point, and I could not help suspecting a touch of malice in
this phrase taken from one of her later letters to me : ' Poor
Georgiana still lingers on, but gets weaker every day — they
say she talks incessantly, but is very seldom conscious.'
As time went on her hearing went more quickly down
hill, and nothing makes greater demands on sanity of
judgment than deafness. I am certain, too, that she was
a classical case of what is now-a-days called auto-intoxica-
tion, and that this, combined with internal weakness such
as often afflicts mothers of large families, chiefly accounted
for the uncertainty of her moods. After the girls were
all married, Bob being in India, I lived at home, and
frankly confess there was no house large enough to hold
her and me. When away, even on a short visit, the love-
ableness of her so completely took possession that I used
to say to myself : ' This time when I go back there will be
no more rows,' but after a day or two the old story began
again. Far be it from me to say it was all her fault ; I
was not nicknamed ' the stormy petrel ' for nothing ; but
I do think not even a saint could have lived in peace with
her, if only because she had nothing definite to do and
over much time for brooding.
THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 53
In those days things were planned as a matter of course
from the point of view of the male only, and no one ever
gave a thought to the inequality of interest in the lives
of men and women of her generation. My father was free
to create for himself as many outside duties as he chose ;
but my mother, unaccustomed from youth upwards, and
I think averse by nature, to country life ; no walker, caring
nothing for sport, which was not the fashion for girls in
her day . . . what should she do, shut up through long
autumns and winters in a country house not 300 yards
from the Basingstoke Canal and its mists ? It was all very
well as long as there were girls to take out, but I lived my
own life of work and games, and was not much of a com-
panion ; meanwhile, for at least half the year, to go out
calling in a shut carriage was supposed to be all the excite-
ment a Mama on the shelf could possibly need.
Such is the force of custom that I think she only realised
by degrees what poor fun this was. I remember her com-
plaining humourously yet rather bitterly of a way the
coachman had, when in a bad temper, of suddenly lashing
the horses and making them go on with a bound that nearly
jerked her head off. Calling once on a very dull neighbour
who lived four miles away, the carriage having by some
misunderstanding gone off home, when she realised that
there was no immediate escape from the intolerable boredom
of her friend, she fainted dead away.
True she was physically indolent, and would sit for
ages, her toes on the fender, her skirt turned back over an
embroidered white petticoat, staring peacefully into the fire.
At such times she would often draw eights in the air
with one foot, and only a few years ago my friend Lady
Ponsonby, who never saw her, suddenly said to me : ' Do
you know when you are thinking you draw eights in the
air with your toe ? ' This trick of my mother's rather
got on our nerves, and Nina, who never used elaborate
language, but often fell asleep after dinner, even in those
early days, once astonished us by drowsily murmuring :
' It is taking no exercise that gives her that regrettable
flexibility of the muscles/ Nevertheless if it was a question
of starting for her annual pilgrimages to Homburg or
54 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
Wiesbaden, where the change of scene and the listening
to music delighted her, or of going up to London, when
fit, to the play or to concerts, in short of doing any-
thing that amused her, this indolence vanished like magic.
Mercifully she was fond of reading, but you can't read
all day, and hours upon hours must have hung like lead
on her hands.
In a word, if bad health was one cause of trouble,
another was boredom — boredom to death ; yet no one
tried harder, especially in later years, ' to be good ' as
children say, and that is why I dare not dwell in thought
on several incidents in our mutual life, dreading the in-
evitable rush of useless remorse. In the winter of 1890-91
matters came to a crisis ; one day she announced quite
suddenly that, more or less crippled as she was for half the
year, she could stand Frimhurst no longer and must really
live in London ! ... It was tragic — this dream of beginning
life afresh at 66, these visions of theatres, concerts, and
other distractions for which she no longer had health and
strength ! . . . I think she herself felt the hopelessness of
the idea, for a few days later she told me she had aban-
doned it, and meant to try and make the best of things
as they were. . . .
Meanwhile, little as we knew it, her days were
numbered ; she suddenly fell ill, and three weeks after
that outburst, we buried her beside Johnny in Frimley
churchyard, — this mother with whom I fought so des-
perately, whom I loved so dearly, and of whose presence
I grow daily more and more conscious. . . .
Of her death I cannot speak, except to say that it
was piteous, heroic, and probably unnecessary. Had the
doctor at once recognised what wras wrong, had a surgeon
been fetched without delay, perhaps her life might have
been saved. Of these things, too, it is useless to think ;
but as time goes on my certainty increases, mercifully for
me, that some day we shall have a chance of making good
our shortcomings towards those whose memory haunts us
most abidingly — the people who really loved us.
CHAPTER VI
A RETROSPECT
IN 1867, my father having been given command of the
Artillery at Aldershot, we left Sidcup, and took up our
abode at Frimhurst in the village of Frimley, a couple of
miles from Farnborough, where I lived till his death in 1894.
On the chance that other people rush as eagerly as I
do to any window, no matter how humble, from which a
glimpse into the past may be obtained, this seems as good
a place as any to stop for a moment and try to give an idea
of the social framework in which a family such as ours
was set in the early seventies — a period which now seems
almost as remote as ' Cranford/
It must be borne in mind that unlike the scene of that
delightful book, Frimley was even then not a real country
neighbourhood. The proximity of the biggest camp in
England, the Staff College, and Sandhurst, brought a great
deal of amusement in its train, and also that rarest element
in the country, an unfailing supply of men — a considera-
tion when you have six daughters to marry. This factor
no doubt weighed with my father when, on the expiration
of his Aldershot command, he decided to buy Frimhurst ;
besides which, as the heads of big units were automatically
called on by the county families, we already knew what
was dreadfully styled ' the nice people/ On reflection I
think the presence of a large floating population brought
rather an unstable element into life. At first there was
an attempt to interest us in household duties, and we took
it in turns to solemnly unlock the storeroom door and
watch the cook weighing out 10 Ibs. of rice and 12 Ibs. of
sugar ; but by degrees this ideal lapsed, and ended, much
55
56 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
to the relief of the younger members of the family, in a
sort of budget system, checked on Saturdays by Papa.
About one thing there was no slackness ; neighbourli-
ness and entertaining were looked on as duties ; everyone
who had a garden gave garden parties, and those who had
the means dinner parties, on which latter occasions terrible
things went on after dinner in the way of music. One of
our neighbours belonging to the ' nice people ' class never
dined out without his cornet-a-piston, on which instrument
he would blast forth ' Ah che la morte ognora/ accompanied
by his gentle smiling wife, who said the cornet box was so
nice in the brougham, keeping one's feet out of the draught.
As for calling, that duty ranked immediately after going
to Church on Sunday, but it was an axiom that the more
exalted the old resident's social position, the less would be
the alacrity shown in swallowing fresh bait. Thus from
lips of persons trembling on the verge of friendliness you
often heard the remark : ' So and so hasn't called yet/
I suppose this is human nature but it seems very snobbish
and ridiculous.
Incidentally, by way of keeping up the moral tone of
the neighbourhood, cruel actions would be committed. I
remember one couple, humdrum and apparently respectable
to a fault ; he, a big, blowsy, rather foolish-looking man
less like a Lovelace than any male on this planet ; she, tall,
elegant in the washed-out style ; both of them more than
humble and apologetic, as was only right, for it was darkly
rumoured that once upon a time things had not been as
they should between them. It had all happened, if ever,
long ago, and meanwhile here they were in our midst,
childless, middle-aged, and tightly married; none the
less ostracism, mitigated but inflexible, was their lot. They
were asked to the large garden parties, seldom to small
ones, and never, never to dinner. . . . Yes ! once, for the
wife of a Staff College officer, the Hon. Mrs. Somebody,
whose forgotten name and kind heart I bless, actually did
ask the outcasts to dine, and for a moment their stocks
went up with a bound. But after all the Hon. Mrs. Some-
body, though an aristocrat, was a bird of passage, whose
vagaries should not influence the settled attitude of perma-
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 57
nent residents, so back the poor couple went to the Arctic
Circle.
If any clergyman should read these lines let me tell
him that I, a child, often wondered how this sort of
thing squared with the Christian charity talked about in
the pulpit. Children accept many strange things un-
questioningly, still more they never notice at all, but that
thing I noticed sharply and felt about as violently as I do
now. Had anyone spoken in this sense to our old rector,
I can imagine his embarrassment, the nervous giggle, the
mumbled platitude, the hasty retreat ; for he was not,
and did not pretend to be, a strenuous priest, but simply
an incumbent of the old school — that is a man of good
family and education, who looked upon his rectorship as a
sinecure, and would have considered special attention to
the morals and spiritual needs of his flock eccentric and
rather impertinent.
Then there were the county balls to which of course
residents subscribed, and at which the humbler country
families had the privilege of mingling with the magnates and
trying to identify the brilliant units o± their house parties.
At Guildford the ball was not supposed to have really
started till the contingents from East Horseley Towers,
Peper Harow, and Clandon had arrived ; and quantities
of people only began to enjoy themselves when the
grandees, who seldom stayed long, had departed, taking
with them the deadly hypnotic power they exercised over
the smaller fry.
Of course these great ones gave balls, also humbler
people like ourselves, but we called them dances. To
step for a moment out of our neighbourhood : staying
in Yorkshire, when I was about sixteen, with the mother
of a school-friend, I was taken to Wentworth, where once
a week, all the time they were in residence, Lord and
Lady Fitzwilliam received any friends and acquaintances
who chose to come. Lord Fitzwilliam, who was then
Lord-Lieutenant, wore breeches, silk stockings, and his
Garter ribbon, and everything, including the stand-up
supper, was most gorgeous, yet somehow or other homely.
There might be 40 guests, there might be 150, according
58 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
to the weather, and these entertainments must have cost
a great deal, but thus did Lord Fitzwilliam conceive his
duty towards his neighbour. I remember that my hostess,
a cousin of Lady Fitzwilliam's and herself a woman of very
good family, made a little curtsey when she greeted the
lady of the house — a survival of respect for office which
struck me curiously and agreeably. The whole thing was
a glimpse of an epoch even then belonging to the past.
To return to Frimhurst. The military environment of
course affected the rural population and indeed may be
said to have created Frimley, which, originally a few
straggling cottages on the verge of a big stretch of heather-
land, only became an independent village when Aldershot
was selected as site for the camp. Hence there were very
few old farmhouses about, but in one of these, of which
only a ruined cart-shed now remains, I have tasted home-
made gooseberry wine — a beverage now almost as mythical
as metheglyn. I wonder how many miles west of Frimley
you would have to travel nowadays to find a farm where
it is still concocted ?
Of our relations with the villagers I have few recol-
lections, nor were they typical, because there was little
feudal tradition in such a neighbourhood, and that little
in course of extinction. Partly from egotism, but mainly,
I honestly think, because it always struck me as indiscreet,
I myself did little visiting among our poorer neighbours.
But the associations of a common youth are imperishable
things, and between myself and contemporary Fnmleyites,
especially younger ones who were in my Sunday-School
class, a very tender bond still exists, though I don't see
them often. I remember that extremely poor old women
used to come up on Saturdays for soup, and when a doctor's
order could be produced, for a bottle of port. There also
were presents at Christmas, and one old woman once wrote
to my mother : ' If there are any flannel petticoats or other
Xmas gifts going I shall be found very acceptable/
This of course was private charity — what a foreign
cook of ours called ' giving to the door ' — but on the subject
of official outdoor relief my father held, in common with
most poor law guardians, what the women of his family
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 59
used to think unsympathetic views. The strong objection
felt by every villager I have ever come across to ' the
House ' was in his opinion unreasonable and pig-headed,
specially, perhaps, because he took immense trouble about
his own Farnham Union and described it as a sort of earthly
paradise. Alas ! though the horrors exposed in ' Oliver
Twist ' had been abolished, their memory was in the blood
of the people. It seems to me that willingness to get
along anyhow at home, rather than be obviously on the
parish, is not without dignity, and if outdoor relief is actually
being received you still are keeping up appearances — a
decent form of the hypocrisy so dear to English minds.
But to understand all this requires imagination, my father's
weak point.
Where the question was one of level-headedness and
common sense he never failed. For instance when the
County Council schemes destroyed the monopoly of the
gentry to sit on the Bench, many of his brother magistrates
were prepared to resign rather than act on terms of equality
with the grocer ; but my father maintained it was more
than ever the duty of men of breeding and education to
stick to the ship, and keep touch with the class in whose
hands more and more power was likely to be placed. The
result was that not one of the old magistrates resigned.
On one point I am of course absolutely ignorant, the
morality of our rural population. After the revelations
that came to all women in the fight for the vote, and since
I myself reached an age at which it is possible to glean
first-hand evidence, and know how even the best and most
decent ' good fellows ' of one's own acquaintance live,
what chiefly amazes me is the contrast between the smooth
surface of society and the orgiastic whirlpool below. This
surface, particularly smooth in England, is worked up by
each race according to its genius and must be assumed
to be a necessity, but it is strange to think how completely
women of my generation were taken in by it. Of course
with the vote, the worst evils, bred of our complete divorce
from reality, will be gradually removed, which is better
than nothing — being about as much as the individual
who attempts to reform his own character can hope for
60 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
It is a commonplace to mention the decrease of drunken-
ness, but I do it because if, as a child, you were in the habit
of walking about country lanes, the altered state of things
comes home to you with more force than as a thesis found
in a pamphlet on social evolution. It was quite usual
then to see men reeling about the roads on Saturdays and
Sundays, now it is quite the exception. So much so that
on hearing recently how the stately footman of a friend
of ours was ordered to descend from the box and assist
an invalid in the ditch, who turned out to be an old gipsy
woman, exceedingly drunk and only equal to ejaculating
repeatedly : ' Blesh you darlin', blesh you darlinY one had
quite a sentimental old-times feeling.
In conclusion, if these general observations seem, as
they do to me, somewhat meagre, it only proves what
was said before — that life in our neighbourhood was not
of the classical well-ordered rural type, but rather a foretaste
of the cinema.
CHAPTER VII
1867 TO 1872
I HAVE been trying to recall whether up to the time of
our migration to Frimhurst I had shown a special bent
for music. Probably, for Pere Rouillard specially mentioned
that ' Martin Landor ' was for ' la petite musicienne.'
I don't think I composed in the Sidcup days, but Mary
and I sang little duets, simple tunes to which I put ' seconds '
as it was called, and in the quality of those seconds and my
accompaniments, I myself, had I been listening, should
certainly have detected a natural gift. But to judge these
things takes an expert, and my mother had had no real
musical training. Transposing and playing by ear came
naturally to me, but so it did to her, so she would not have
been much impressed by that ; or perhaps she thought
I was conceited enough without special encouragement as
regards my music ; anyhow I cannot remember hearing
or thinking much about it.
On a very hot September afternoon we arrived at
North Camp Station, and I was one of a detachment that
walked the two and a half miles to Frimhurst along the
pretty Basingstoke Canal, past Mitchett lake, scene of many
future boating excursions. My father's walking powers
were certainly unimpaired at that time, for I remember
trotting occasionally in order to keep up with him and
wishing he would not walk so fast. Dragonflies were
poising and darting among the reeds. I had never seen
any before and thought them the most beautiful things
imaginable.
The entrance to the grounds may have played a part
in my father's decision to take Frimhurst, for it is the sort
61
62 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
of entrance that makes an owner modest about the rent.
At this point the South- Western Railway passes under the
canal, and for about twenty yards the carriage drive is
actually a bit of the towing path — on the one side the low
tunnel-parapet, on the other some rickety posts and rails
fencing the canal, so that you are between the devil and
the deep sea. My father, who had an eye for a horse,
generally bought quadrupeds capable of dragging a heavy
landau full of people to Church in single harness ; for on
Sundays the principle was cruelty to animals, balanced by
kindness to the stable men, who thus had only one set of
harness to clean. Our horses therefore were seldom of the
well-bred nervy type, but often young and imperfectly
trained, so it may be imagined what happened when, with a
sudden roar, a train dashed out of the tunnel and sent a
cloud of steam swirling into their faces. I only once saw
actual evidence of an accident myself, an Artillery waggon
and pair having just gone through the posts and rails ;
the horses were calmly standing in midstream as if that
had been their original destination, waiting for the driver
to return with help. After a year or two, in deference to
my mother's entreaties, the height of the parapet was
increased, which slightly improved matters.
There are two celebrated incidents connected with the
tunnel, the first being such an amazing example of human
stupidity that is almost incredible, but I witnessed it myself.
Hearing a train coming, a cousin of ours, aged about twenty-
five, rushed like mad to the spot, stared at the canal, and
then said in tones of deep disappointment : ' Why, they
told me the smoke comes up through the water ! ! '
The second incident is far more credible. Not long
after our arrival at Frimhurst Papa got a letter from the
Railway Company, saying that boys were in the habit
of hurling stones and other missiles on to the trains from
the parapet, a large piece of brick having recently missed
a stoker's head by a hairbreadth ; and that as it was on
his property would he please put a stop to the nuisance.
On this occasion he modified his views regarding the methods
of the police, and bade a constable hide behind the hedge
and watch. One day the man came up to the house and
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 63
reported he had identified the culprit. ' Why didn't you
bring him up here ? ' said my father, ' I'd have rubbed his
ears for him and told his mother to give him a good hiding/
' Well sir/ answered the constable, ' it's very awkward,
but it's one of your young ladies ' ; and as a matter of fact
I was the culprit. O ! the excitement of it, the preliminary
piling up of ammunition and dropping of one trial stone ;
the rumble that told you the train had entered the tunnel ;
the quick guess at its pace, and the chance, supposing you
had missed the tender, that something might yet be done
with the final guard's van, which would emerge . . . when ?
I can feel the thrill of it now !
At the other end of our property was another railway
bridge called ' Deepcut/ which gives an idea of the place.
Like my father I always encourage friends' and relations'
children to take risks, especially if they are cursed with
timorous parents, so I hope it is not too conceited to say
that I really was a daring little girl myself. Nowadays I
often bike over Deepcut bridge, and not for less than £50
would I do to-day what I often did then, run along the
parapet. Let me confess that I was terrified, just as in
later years during perilous climbs in the Alps ; and this is
the fascination of both performances.
A home you came to know in later life can never be as
poetical a memory as one you left when very young and
never saw again. Still Frimhurst was an attractive place,
a far bigger and better house than Sidcup, bounded on
one side, it is true, by the deep railway cutting, on the
banks of which rabbit ferreting at once became a passion,
but on the other, as a compensation, is a really picturesque
section of the old canal, out of which opened a lake owned
by a neighbour, where we fished and learned to skate.
There were about thirty-two acres of grounds, and I think
the pasturage must have been poor, as my father was for
ever spreading over it a special sort of manure that seemed
to consist chiefly of brickbats, sardine tins, and old boots.
By and by, when the golf passion surged into England,
we vamped up a home course, and this strange manure
gave trouble playing through the green, lost balls being
found in the broken base of blacking bottles and other
64 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
difficult places. Near the canal was a delightful orchard ;
one tree in it, a white-heart cherry-tree with spreading
branches, was the scene of many of my climbing feats and
Mary's sentimental trial-trips, for the cherry-tree was the
favourite haunt of a long series of boy-lovers. I have a
tragic vision of my mother in that orchard, crying as if her
heart would break, the doctor having just told her there
was but a slender chance of rearing Bob, the last baby.
Lower down the canal is a series of locks, across the
gates of which it was Johnny's and my delight to run.
Mary, who was liable to sudden giddiness, joined in this
amusement, though unwillingly, and had a system of letting
herself down towards the centre of the gates, a leg on each
side, and shuffling across, which was unladylike but better
than drowning. Nina, who also had a bad head, would
be urged onwards by a hat pin applied to her fat
calves.
Round the canal many memories linger. I often look
now-a-days at a ' flash ' near our entrance-lodge, and
think about children's first terrified glimpses of Death ;
for there a little boy, whom we noticed wading as we crossed
the bridge one day, lost his footing, and was carried home
a corpse to his mother before we came back again across
the bridge. I remember Alice telling me God had taken
the little boy to Himself, that all was well with him, and
that I must not be so terror-stricken and miserable about
it. ...
My father always said what finally decided him to take
Frimhurst was the fine drawing-room which would make
' such a nice room for your mother.' It certainly was
delightful in summer, but nowadays would hardly be con-
sidered habitable in the winter, with its solitary fireplace
and five French windows, three of which were in the bow
window where my poor mother used to write her letters.
Central heating was then unknown in England, and my
father would have considered it a most unhealthy invention,
but I am certain the appalling cold of that room, and of
her big bedroom above it, must have been still more un-
healthy for one leading a sedentary life. Indeed I often
wonder whether the slowness of thought that characterises
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 65
our race is not the result of an insane objection to warm
rooms, ending in congealed brain.
The schoolroom was in the oldest part of the house.
The windows, sort of square portholes, to see out of which
you had to stand up, were shuttered at night by sliding
mirrors. Running under them horizontally on the out-
side wall were ivy branches as thick as a man's arm, the
furry coating of which was worn to the bone by the
boots of climbing children. All our many governesses
resembled each other in one particular ; that when reading
after supper on summer's evenings they would see ghostly
heads peeping in at the portholes, shoot the shutters
with a bang, and rush into the passage screaming
' burglars/
This room was the only one with charm in an otherwise
commonplace but very comfortable house.
It was in the year following our arrival at Frimhurst
that Bob, the boy who was to console my mother for the
coming loss of Johnny, was born. He was a very quiet
delicate child, and according to a family legend never spoke
till the day he was sitting under the table, clipping the
cat's fur with a pair of scissors, and told to desist ; where-
upon he suddenly burst into speech with the remark * All
the cats in the wairld aren't yours ! ' and never ceased
talking afterwards. It is odd that all I can remember of
the two youngest children in their extreme youth is this
legend, and a riddle asked by Nelly : ' If a new-laid egg
could speak what jam would it mention ? ' Answer :
* Ma-laid-me.' (Mar-me-lade.)
Johnny was now a Westminster boy. My father's
youngest sister had married Dr. Charles Scott who at this
time was Head Master of Westminster, and Mary and I
sometimes spent the night at their house in Dean's Yard.
From our window we had a grand view of the boys playing
racquets against the schoolhouse wall, or flying into school
in their trenchers ; and occasionally we caught sight of
my uncle, in cap and gown, sweeping across the school yard,
always in a violent hurry. It was understood that if we
met Johnny in the cloisters or any other part of the dear
VOL. I. F
66 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
old buildings we must make no sign of recognition and
expect to be cut. We were.
This childless uncle and aunt always spent Christmas
with us, hardly a comfortable arrangement I should think
for Johnny ; but he was a more than satisfactory pupil,
and my cold, stately, alarming aunt worshipped him — as I
remember suddenly realising when, in a letter she wrote
my mother after his death, I read the words : ' He was
the apple of my eye/ Of my uncle we were terrified in
our early days. He was really one of the dearest, warmest-
hearted of men but every inch a schoolmaster, and I never
knew anyone who suffered fools less gladly. His severe
manner, intolerance of contradiction, and general dictatorial-
ness, amounting I fear to quarrelsomeness, were supposed
to stand in his way when Bishops were being nominated ;
but aloofness from intrigue and time-serving probably
hampered him still more. He always preached the
Christmas sermon in Frimley Church, which was looked
forward to as a great intellectual treat by the congregation.
On Christmas Day we children came down to dinner,
and after snapdragons and punch, grown-ups and all played
round games, generally ' commerce/ When my father
began explaining what card one ought to have played,
Uncle Charles would say in his high-pitched, querulous
voice : ' Now John, do let an old schoolmaster make the
matter clear to the child/ and proceed to do this in a manner
so involved, that my mother, whom he was very fond of,
once exclaimed : ' Really Charles, I don't know if you
understand your own explanations, but no one else can/
She was more than free and unabashed with this alarming
personality, a freedom which filled us with the same awe
as did the ways of Colonel O'H with Papa. One day,
driving with him through Aldershot, he dozing on the
opposite seat, she poked him hard with her parasol and
said : ' Do wake up : they'll think I am driving through
the camp with a tipsy clergyman/ I remember once, in
one of those silences that sometimes fall on a large party,
asking quite innocently : ' What is a pedagogue ? ' Result ;
still deader silence, and then everyone laughed rather
nervously.
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 67
Daily as the clock struck twelve these two would sally
forth on a constitutional up the Windmill Hill just outside
our gates, and afford a spectacle rare, I think, in England,
but which may be enjoyed on Sundays throughout the
whole German Empire ; that is he always stalked along a
good ten yards in front of his wife. Thus they started, and
thus they returned at 12.45, and while kicking off his
goloshes in the porch he would hold the door open and say
impatiently : ' Come along Susan ' (with a slight accent
on the second syllable) and she would give a little nervous
giggle to which she was subject, but not hurry in the very
least. This was the invariable ritual. When their visit was
concluded, a fly and pair was heaped up with maid and
luggage and they started on a ten-mile drive across Fox
Hills and the Hog's Back, along a beautiful road since closed
to all but the military, to pay Christmas visit Number 2
to another cousin of his, Lord Midleton. For some time
afterwards Peper Harow rang, as did Frimhurst, with
anecdotes about what Uncle Charles said to" the lodge-
keeper who hoped he was quite well, or to the rash lady
who asked if schoolmastering was not a very interesting
task ? When he was about to annihilate somebody he
would begin with an impatient, almost larmoyant, ' My
dear Sir ' or ' Madam/ which caused a hush to fall upon
the assembly, sportsman, lover, or bore breaking off his
tale to be in at the death. I don't think he was a popular
Head Master, though greatly respected ; but only in private
life did you get to know the real man.
Once, many years after the time I am speaking of, a
tragedy happened on that bit of closed country on the Fox
Hills. There are rifle butts up there, and one foggy day
hounds ran into the danger zone. Suddenly realising
where he was the Master began blowing his horn frantically,
and while one of our Frimley neighbours was saying to her
son : ' I wonder what that's for ? ' the boy fell from his
horse dead at her feet, a stray bullet having passed through
his brain.
CHAPTER VIII
1867 TO 1872
LIFE at Frimhurst up to the time I came out falls into
two periods, the governess and the school epochs. Our
governesses never stayed long ; they pass before my mind's
eye in dreary procession ; some English, others German ;
some with dyspepsia, others with unfortunate natures,
—perhaps the same thing under different names ; nearly
always ugly, and quite invariably without the faintest
notion of making lessons either pleasant or profitable.
Certainly we were difficult pupils, naughty and refractory
to discipline, still we were quite intelligent children, and
later on Mary and I learned something at school ; but
excepting one, who without intending it determined my
course in life, our governesses might have been lay-figures
for all we got out of them. I think the whole governess
system monstrous and unworkable ; even as a child I
vaguely understood how impossible is the position of these
poor unwilling intruders into the family circle, and hope
time will evolve some more civilised scheme of education
for ' the daughters of the nobility and gentry/ On the
other hand our governesses were specimens of humanity
few families, however kind-hearted, could assimilate.
I have said I was subject to ' passions ' as I called them,
and about this time drew up a list of over a hundred girls
and women to whom, had I been a man, I should have
proposed ; it is therefore no great tribute to the charms
of Miss Hammond, the first governess I remember, that her
name figured on the list of passions. She was young, rather
pretty, and wore a chignon which she told us was her own
hair. Perhaps she meant in the sense that she had paid
68
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 69
for it, for alas ! one day she slipped up on the ice and
away rolled the chignon like the heart in Richepin's terrify-
ing ballad, but without asking its owner if she had hurt
herself. I said nothing ; one is too paralysed by dreadful
emotion to speak at such moments, but then and there
my passion expired.
And now comes the recital of one of the ugliest things
I ever did. A few months later Miss Hammond departed
for good in the same low pony-chaise with which these
records begin . . . and as it sped down the drive I clung
on to the back, hissed in her ear : ' I know your chignon
is false ! ' and dropped off. I was quite aware that my
action was hateful, but it is not till old age is in sight that
sincerity-mad people can quietly let a deceiver think his
deception has been a success.
H. B., the great friend of my maturer years, and the
wisest man I ever knew, had agreeable views on the subject
of making up ; he said it predisposed him in a person's
favour, as showing a wish to please. I quite see this point
of view, but it is not mine, and in my youth I felt about it
so violently that I remember telling my mother, who was
demonstrative and craved for demonstration, that I should
kiss her much oftener but for her ' powder and things/
' Things ' stood for the very moderate amount of rouge
and kohl with which, as I said, she repaired the ravages
of time, and I am glad to say my remark produced not
the slightest change in this innocent habit.
One of Miss Hammond's successors presented my mother
with the most astonishing specimen of German ingenuity
I have ever seen, except perhaps similar souvenirs fabricated
by the Grand Dukes and Duchesses who clustered round
Goethe in his country retreat, and deigned to live the
simple life there. This treasure is made of thin wire, small
black beads, and eight locks cut from the eight heads of
the Smyth children, and represents a bunch of blackberries,
the berries being made of beads, and the leaves — how she
did it I cannot think — of hair. There were all shades
in our family, from black to flaxen, but though the leaves
are still shapely and tidy, age and dust have wrought
them all to the same dull hue. By immemorial custom
7o IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
this strange object has lived under a glass shade, stuck
into one of Prince Charlie's goblets, and there it is, con-
fronting me at this moment.
During the Franco-Prussian war, when we had a rather
feeble-minded German governess, we used to rush in to her
first thing in the morning announcing imaginary German
defeats — and the poor governesses never saw the papers
till evening ! We were too young to have any bias one
way or the other, though my mother of course was all for
the French ; it was just the ferocious playfulness of youth.
The world is now accustomed to the sanctimonious tone
of the Hohenzollern telegrams, but then it was a novelty
and caused much astonishment. There was a paraphrase
by Mr. Punch of one of the King of Prussia's effusions to
his Queen which delighted Papa :
By Heaven's will, my dear Augusta
We've had another awful buster,
Ten thousand Frenchmen gone below !
Praise God from Whom all blessings flow !
By such trivial incidents do great contemporary events
hook themselves into the memory of a child. Except the
fact that we all picked lint, these are my only recollections
connected with a war of which the whole world has not
yet finished reaping the harvest ! . . .
Besides the catalogue of ' passions ' I drew up a paper
I would give anything to study to-day — a list of things to be
avoided when one should be grown up. One was ' never
tell people what your parents used to say/ my mother
having a way of quoting, for our benefit, axioms used against
her in her childhood by her own mother, which made us
think Bonnemaman must have been a most disagreeable
person. Apart from this, one noticed that the words
' As my father used to say ' strike a chill at all times and
in all places. There was another golden rule I have since
broken only too often, alas ! never to speak of one's digestion
(unless to the doctor, who, as Lady Constance Leslie once
remarked, is paid to put up with that style of conversation).
This rule came on to the list because of an objectionable
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY] ROBINSON 71
habit one of our governesses had, of extending herself
after lunch in an armchair, her legs stuck out stiffly, and
many cushions rammed into her back — her body being
thus in a straight line at an angle of 45° to the floor, which
posture she considered favourable to digestion. People
who remember their childhood will guess how fiercely we
resented this spectacle.
Under the eye of successive governesses we painfully
translated into French and German stories such as George
Washington saying : ' Father, I cannot tell a lie, / cut
down that apple tree ! ' or Newton wagging his head
at the dog that had just devoured his astronomical notes
and merely remarking : ' O Diamond, Diamond, you do
not know what mischief you have done ! ' (which shows he
was not fit to keep a dog). These two odious anecdotes
might well implant in childish bosoms a life-long aversion
to the qualities of truthfulness and self-command. In
short we pursued the usual course of instruction in the
usual manner. But one thing I will say : from Mrs.
Markham's ' History of England/ a book recently re-read
with delight, I learned all the history I knew till the
day dawned for loving Shakespere, and consider these
two together can defy the Universe as quickeners of an
historical sense in the young.
Between lesson hours, and of course in the holidays,
we had heaps of fun. Our end of Frimley consisted of a
few houses grouped about a village green, and if I were to be
asked who looms largest in my mind during those years
I should unhesitatingly say : ' Mrs. Hall of the tin-shop/
the unforgettable owner of a rural emporium where every-
thing from sweets to carpets could be got. Shrewd, good-
looking, quick-tempered, as full of kindness as of mother-
wit, and a mistress of lightning repartee, this true descendant
of Mrs. Poyser ruled her husband and four big sons, mostly
farm labourers, with a rod of iron, and spoiled us children
to our hearts' content. Heaven only knows what amount
of sweets she gave away in overweight. There too I bought
the penny whistles to which we danced Sir Roger de Coverley
on the ice — for our skating days had now dawned —
and let me say that to dance on skates and play that
72 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
particularly breathless tune at the same time is one of the
most exhausting feats in the world.
The village boasted an annual fair, long since gone
the way of most country fairs, and great fun we found it ;
but the appearance presented by the Green after the merry-
go-rounds and cocoa-nut shies were gone, left me with so
disagreeable an impression as almost to put me off the
fair itself — on which theme, if one were a poet and classical
scholar, a neat Latin Ode might be written.
We always had one, sometimes two donkeys ; the
other day a grey-headed man in Frimley told me he re-
membered, as school-boy, my riding into the village school
right among the children, mounted on a black donkey.
One of my most cherished possessions is the accompanying
sketch, already referred to, by our cousin Hugo of a drive
in the donkey cart — a sketch which incidentally shows
that structural differences in Mary's and my character,
though concealed by the childish plumpness of our moral
outline, did not escape this shrewd observer's eye. Calm
and unmoved, neatly shod in the drab boots with shiny
toes I remember so well, her profile indicates the total
detachment of a young lady out for an airing. That picture
has special mention in my Will.
Sometimes we raised, I cannot think how, a team of
four, and the harness-room was raided for reins and traces ;
this four-in-hand was a grand thing to talk about but not
really a success, for one had to crawl along the backs of
the wheelers in order to thump the leaders with the butt
end of the whip. I cannot recall either Johnny or Mary
taking the initiative in these donkey affairs, and Nina,
whose subsequent adventures would fill tomes, was not
then old enough to join in ours. In fact all I can remember
about her at that period was her approaching Violet one
day, obviously uneasy in her mind, and saying she had
something ' very funny-' to show her in the rosery. It
turned out to be two expiring frogs which she had impaled ;
... the hour of confession had struck !
Frimley Church was two miles off, a modern building,
monument of some architect's whole-hearted devotion to
hideousness, the only sympathetic feature being an old-
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 73
fashioned three-decker pulpit, but even that was of deal
and relatively new. At each Church Festival the donkey
cart was piled up with whatever might be the appropriate
fruits of nature, and off we started to decorate the Church,
the great point being lunch with a kind old neighbour close
by. I have said that as a tiny child I was terrified of
churchyards, but at this time they must have had a morbid
attraction, or perhaps it was under the influence of ' Hamlet '
that I loved to watch the sexton at work and ' think of
graves and worms and epitaphs ' as the young will — and
as the old won't. It may be remembered too, that in order
to increase the agony of love I would cheerfully consign
my ' passions ' to an early grave, but as regards myself
terrors of Death haunted me throughout my youth, and it
was perhaps with some vague idea of conjuring the spectre
that I persuaded the sexton to give me a human bone,
which I hid among my collars and handkerchiefs. But
this relic left me no peace, for I knew its possession was
sacrilegious, and at last in floods of tears confessed all to
my mother. I think she was a good deal taken aback,
but explained quite gently that it would never do, when
the Day of Judgment comes, for people's limbs to be
scattered about in different places. Evidently she had
never read, or did not go with, a work called ' The Last
Day/ from which Mr. Gosse quotes, in his book ' Father and
Son/ the following remarkable verse :
Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all
The various bones, obsequious to the call,
Self-mov'd advance — the neck perhaps to meet
The distant head, the distant legs the feet.
Meanwhile she undertook to have the bone put back
in the place it came from, and later informed me that
all was well, the sexton having assured her it was a
sheep's bone, and that he never would have dreamed of
giving me human remains. I often wonder if this was a
legend invented by her to soothe my inflamed and suffering
imagination, or whether the sexton, afraid of getting into
trouble, really hazarded this improbable yarn.
74 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
I call him the sexton, but he was only an understudy,
the real one being ninety-six and long past grave-digging,
but to the end he stuck to his post of clerk. Seated in the
lowest box of the three decker, his gold-rimmed spectacles
poised on the very tip of his nose, his old forefinger travelling
across the pages of a huge prayer-book as smoothly as the
hands of a clock, he would bleat out an amazing long
' A-ma-a-a-a-n ' that would throw rapid performers like
Uncle Charles out of their stride. People used to come from
neighbouring parishes to hear old Mr. Weston say ' Amen/
A fantastic scene, which no one who saw it can ever
have forgotten, once took place in the three-decker. As
I said, my uncle always preached on Christmas morning,
but one Christmas there was another clerical star staying
in the parish, who had been asked to take the service, and
understood he was also to oblige with a sermon. He had
duly read the Prayers from the middle box, and had just
opened the door, preparatory to climbing up into the highest
or preacher's box, when my uncle, who had been sitting robed
within the Altar rails, came sweeping along at his usual
rushing pace and also made for the top box. They met
on the narrow staircase, each with a tightly rolled manu-
script in his hand, and a rather heated altercation took
place, neither being of the nature that gives way. What
with the shape of the three-decker, and the baton-like
appearance of the manuscripts, there was more than a
slight suggestion of Mr. Punch and the policeman. I
cannot remember who won the day, though I feel sure it
must have been my uncle, but the aged clerk, cross-
questioned about this scandalous incident, said he really
didn't know what to make of it ; and it probably was too
much for him, for he died soon afterwards.
In the summer there were picnics on the canal, and
plenty of canoeing though none of us could swim. I re-
member seeing a black thing crawling out of the water
in our wake which we all thought was the retriever, but it
turned out to be Nina smothered in canal mud. Not long
after our arrival at Frimhurst, lawn tennis, preceded by
badminton, became the fashion, and I think for a time
everything was dropped for that. We no longer built but
bought racing craft, without neglecting other carpentering.
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 75
I know I was a better hand at it than either Johnny
or Maunsell B . My three-legged stools and tables
may have been less ambitious than theirs but they neither
wobbled nor broke down, and started in me at an early age
the complete confidence I was to feel later in woman as
co-architect of the State.
In the winter there were entertainments at the schools
on whatever Saturday in the month had most moon. At
one of these I made my first public appearance, singing
duets at the age of eleven with Mary, aged thirteen, and
mother accompanied us in order to give my voice a better
chance. Papa was nearly always on the programme,
reading poems such as ' The Raven,' * We are Seven/ and
extracts from ' The Siege of Corinth/ which the modern
rustic mind, fed on cheap novelettes and cinema, would
not stand for a moment, but I think they liked it then.
Other neighbouring gentry contributed items and passing
talent was enlisted. I remember an enormously stout bird
of passage who had a habit cultivated by many more famous
contralti of * singing like a man ' as I called it, and in this
deep chest voice she used to give us a song much in vogue
called ' The Diver/ In case this work has vanished from
the market, I cannot help quoting the music of the refrain,
surely more realistic and funny than most things on earth.
(very slowly} ri - tar - dan - do
Walk -ing a - lone, walk -ing a - lone, walk -ing a -lone in the depths of the sea I
We sometimes met revellers on the walk home, and tactical
manoeuvres were necessary to avoid them. Once a local
patriarch remarked, as he saluted us unsteadily, that really
the General ought to get the hedges cut back.
My first violent religious impression falls in the early
days of our Frimhurst life, when we were taken by an
Evangelical cousin to a bazaar at Aldershot for the benefit
of soldiers' orphans, got up by Miss Daniel, forerunner of
the Y.M.C.A. ; after which there was to be an address by
Lord Radstock. We had never been to a bazaar before
and passionately hated it. Late in the afternoon I
76 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
remember Miss Daniel saying : ' Now you will hear something
better than bazaars/ and presently a dislike of Low Church,
conceived in contact with our cousin, became loathing
under the influence of Lord Radstock's manner, expressions,
voice, and puffy, white-maggot-like physique. I am sure
he was a good man, but he made us hate religion for the
time being.
Another early Aldershot recollection is Mary and me
being taken to sing at an R.A. entertainment, when an
appropriate variant of my father's usual peroration came
out with tremendous emphasis as addressed to a military
audience. Our coachman, an ex-Artilleryman, was in a
terrible way lest we should not do ourselves justice, ex-
horting us to hold our heads well up, and not hide our faces
with the music. ' Remember, Miss Mary/ he said, ' it's
the hattitude as does it/ We bore George Taylor's advice
in mind, and on musical occasions in later life one could not
desire a more gratifying reception than the Colonel's little
girls met with.
As a printed contemporary notice lends relief to very
trivial incidents, I give an extract from Sheldrake's
Gazette (still the leading Aldershot journal) which I
found among old papers.
On this occasion the Colonel's two fair daughters
appeared upon the platform to sing a duet, and the applause
with which they were greeted was indescribable. Each
possessing a sweet voice, the effect was exceedingly telling,
the duet being so exquisitely rendered that an enthusiastic
encore was called for. Mrs. Smyth accompanied her
daughters in the first duet, and in the second the younger
of the two fair sisters presided at the piano. This was the
first appearance of ladies on the platform in this room,
and that their noble example may be followed is the earnest
wish of all who take delight in these excellent entertain-
ments ; for assuredly nothing is more likely to tend to their
success than the offer of the services of ladies who possess
musical talent, and are willing to contribute to the enter-
tainment of the soldier during the winter months.
Before reading the piece he had selected for Tuesday
evening (' The Death of Montrose ') the noble Colonel,
addressing his men, said, — and he spoke with an earnestness
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 77
that must have made itself felt in the breasts of every one
of them : ' I read these selections to you, my men, because
they treat of noble lives, and in the hope that they may
be incentives to you in the path of duty. I wish to impress
upon you that it is expected of us at every time, and in
every clime, whether amidst frost and snow, or pestilential
famine and disease, to endure without murmuring hard-
ships of every kind. Let me also impress upon you strongly
that when required to face death we should do so without
fear, but in hope of mercy and forgiveness, and be ever
ready to lay down our lives for our Queen, our country, and
our God/ I can hardly describe the enthusiasm with
which these few words were met, and can attribute it to
no other cause than the high confidence and esteem placed
in their Colonel, and the love of their country which exists
in the breast of the British soldier.
This encomium is no great compliment to the ' few words '
themselves, but one mustn't split straws.
Of one personality frequently met with during the
Christmas holidays at children's parties I have an inefface-
able recollection, the Conjuror — a round, bright-eyed little
old man with a shock of grey curly hair, who never ceased
entreating us to watch him closely ; ' Now don't take your
eyes off me, my little dears,' he would say ; ' it's while I'm a
talking to you that I'm a deceiving of you ' — a phrase that was
adopted by the family. At one time he nearly died, and
when able to resume business he remarked to my mother,
pointing to his fat helpmate : ' When I was bad I used to
say to 'er, " You may get another 'usband, my dear, but
you won't get another conjuror."
For my part, as soon as I realised I should never guess
how these tricks are done, conjuring rather exasperated
me, my feeling then as now being, what's the fun of not
understanding ? Or again, why crack your brain about
something you know is really quite simple ? For which
reason I am never tempted by the later works of Mr. Henry
James. Montaigne was of the same way of thinking, and
says somewhere that when he comes to an obscure para-
graph he makes one or two ' charges ' at it, and then, if
the meaning still eludes him, throws away that book for
good and all.
CHAPTER IX
1867 TO 1872
NOT long after our arrival at Frimhurst, Alice was presented
and came out. There were five years between her and
Mary, and since, as I said, there were four between Nina
and me, Mary and I were in a schoolroom group by our-
selves. For this reason I can remember nothing about
Alice's proceedings, with one momentous exception — her
first proposal, or anyhow the first at which we, so to speak,
assisted. There was a certain young soldier with very
pink cheeks and a strange habit of wearing velveteen coats
— an assiduous visitor whose attentions became marked.
One day we saw him leaving the house in evident agitation,
and when, with the tact of younger sisters, we instantly
rushed into the drawing-room, lo ! there was Alice, sup-
ported by mother, being plied with smelling-salts ! In
Jane Austen's day this was the correct attitude for a girl
of sensibility on tender occasions, and to that epoch Alice
belonged by education and temperament ; but Mary and
I were early samples of the coming generation and poor
Alice never heard the last of that touching tableau. She
declares to this day it was a figment of our imaginations,
but it was not, and I am glad to have seen this sort of thing
with my own eyes, for we shall never see it again.
Whether forerunners or not, Mary and I were still con-
sidered very quaint children, as in the Sidcup days, and
were infuriated by a strange young lady who called to her
brother through the window : ' O Lionel, do come in and
hear these funny children talk/ whereupon we of course
fell silent, as self-respecting children would. Neither of
us was in the least shy, but when in the presence of one of
my ' passions,' I was liable, under the stress of emotion, to
78
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 79
extraordinary contortions ; such as standing on the outside
of my feet, swaying to and fro, brushing the palm of one
hand violently against the other in mid-air, as if one were
flint and the other steel — antics that Mary, who knew the
cause, eyed with scornful astonishment.
It is to be hoped, more especially as these Memoirs
are pointedly dedicated to people with sense of humour,
that no one will imagine we chronically disapproved of
each other or were for ever competing and quarrelling.
Like all healthy-minded children we had our little rivalries
and ambitions, a large stock of cocksureness as to who
was in the right, and . . . both of us had tempers. Hence,
though our differences were no longer settled with knives
and forks, there were plenty of rows, but as a matter of
fact we were devoted to each other, and so closely identified
in people's minds that, much to our annoyance, our parents
would sometimes say : ' Mary and Ethel, shut the door/
Believers in the saint-like children met with in books, and
who probably view their own vanished childhood in the
same unreal light, may not be of my opinion, but I hold
that no great attachment is possible between young growing
things without these clashes of temperament, and that you
are all the better friends afterwards. Thus it was at any
rate in our case.
It had always been an axiom in the family, that from
earliest years Mary had been drawn by me into tomboyish
ways that really were foreign to her nature. I think this
is probably true ; anyhow, as time went on, boys who began
by being attracted by my independence and proficiency
in games, always ended by forsaking me in order to minister
to Mary's more feminine helplessness — buckling on her
skates for her, or in response to a piteous ' Help me ! I'm
giddy ! ' flying to her rescue among the higher branches
of the old cherry-tree. I remember various incidents
connected with faithless boy-lovers of mine, but think
that in all this I was playing a part, doing what I knew
was the correct thing. Now and again a very real feeling
of mortification may have swept over me as I saw my
admirers succumbing to the charms of Mary, but from the
first my most ardent sentiments were bestowed on members
8o IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
of my own sex, and the love affairs with boys were but
imitative and trashy, I fear.
The other day I came upon a draft of a letter addressed
to a very dull Harrow boy who afterwards took Holy Orders.
Oddly enough all my admirers became schoolmasters, or
clergymen, or both ; perhaps I was the one wild adven-
ture of coast-hugging spirits who immediately afterwards
reverted to type. This particular lover seems, however,
to have reverted prematurely, and the letter began : ' O
Willie, Willie ! how could you deceive a poor girl as you
have me ? ' — which shows that my style was formed either
on Shakespere or the nursery maid, who under these
circumstances use identical language.
Humble as is the mood reflected in this letter, my father
and most of the relations rightly considered that I had
an overweening opinion of myself ; in fact Papa said I
reminded him of Lord John Russell, of which notoriously
conceited statesman the Times remarked that he would
be quite willing to take command of the Channel Fleet at
a moment's notice. No doubt the parallel was justified,
and I may have deserved the plentiful snubbing I got, but
no amount of it ever shook my conviction that I was more
musical than they had any idea of. For instance my mother
and I were once hunting in some music books for a certain
composition, but whereas she played the first bar of each
piece in her book with one hand, I just gave a glance and
turned the page of mine. ' Take care, you'll miss it/ cried
she, and I said to myself : ' She doesn't know as much as
I ! ' but didn't tell her so because I loved her — a rare case
of abstention from boasting which astonished me myself,
and which I cannot help mentioning.
I have said that she lost her beautiful voice long before
the usual age, but in the earlier Frimhurst days, when she
was between forty-three and forty-five, she still sang occa-
sionally, and one of her songs, my father's favourite, ' Of
what is the old man thinking ? ' had a charming melody,
her perfect phrasing of which struck even me, a child.
But the song I liked best — really a duet, only I never heard
it in that form — was a certain little masterpiece all on the
tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant, (a great test) — full
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON
81
of accent and fun both as to music and words. It was
called, I think, ' Mr. and Mrs. Smith/ and illustrated to
perfection H. B.'s theory that ' English married life bases
on snarling.' Mrs. Smith had apparently expressed a wish
to go to Brighton, and the ball opens with her husband's
comments on this proposal. I cannot refrain from giving
the first four bars and some of the verses, the last three
lines of which are always repeated.
Misses Smith, up • on my word, it is really too ab - surd ! I de-
w
— «.
clare there's no one like you ei - ther far
or near ! Win - t«r
m
(MR. SMITH)
Mrs. Smith, upon my word
You are really too absurd,
I declare there's no one like you either far — or — near !
Winter, Summer, Autumn, Spring,
You're for ever on the wing,
Never quiet for a moment Mrs. Smith — my — dear !
(MRS. SMITH)
O my love, now in your conscience
How can you talk such nonsense !
I declare your little judgment isn't o — ver — clear ;
There's a time of year that carries
Ev'ry soul to Rome or Paris,
And I only mentioned Brighton Mr. Smith — my — dear
After a stanza or two which I have forgotten. . . .
VOL. I. G
8a IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
(MR. SMITH)
Then your bonnets, caps, and curls,
Combs, and trinkets for the girls,
Your Assembly Rooms and boxes on the Pre — mier — tier
Ton my life it's very funny,
Not a thought about the money . . .
Where the devil should it come from Mrs. Smith — my — dear ?
(MRS. SMITH, sarcastically)
And pray where are all your schemes,
All your million-making dreams,
Your subscription men, your Aldermen, your no — ble —
peer ?
If of all you've let them sack
You ever see a shilling back,
Why I'm very much mistaken Mr. Smith — my — dear !
I cannot remember Mr. Smith's counter to this — some-
thing to the effect that his restless spouse seems to prefer
any place to the domestic hearth — but I wish I could
convey an idea of the deadly point my mother put into
Mrs. Smith's final thrust . . . with just a suspicion of
tears at the repetition of the last three lines. . . .
(MRS. SMITH)
I don't ask, Sir, where you roam,
But this I know, — at home
It is very little of you that we see — or — hear !
And where you choose to be
Is a mystery to me ...
Why the fact is quite notorious, Mr. Smith — my — dear !
The concluding verse is a real duet, both singing at
the same time, and all I remember of it is the eminently
sensible conclusion they come to in the last line :
So we'd better both be quiet j ,/' I Smith — my — dear !
1867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 83
I would give anything to meet with this extraordinarily
English bit of music again — as English as Bishop and
Sullivan, harking back far beyond the former, and yet
thoroughly Victorian. Can any one help me ?
By this time I had taken to composing chants and hymns,
music being connected in my mind, in spite of the Smiths,
mainly with religion — a well-known English malady. And
to each of these productions the name of a ' passion ' was
given. Our duets had now become a feature at home
dinner parties, Mary having a very pretty voice and a great
idea of delivery. One thing I well remember — wondering
how I knew by instinct exactly where she, or other singers
I accompanied, would be likely to ' go flat ' (for of course
one interval was as easy to me as another) and what note,
emphasised in time, would correct the tendency. In later
years this mystery of critical intervals became clear to me.
There was one musical torture of my youth, however,
from which no relief could be obtained. Maddened by a
reiterated wrong note, or what my friend Lady Ponsonby
once called ' foolish basses/ I would cry : ' I can't do this
sum if you go on playing G natural ; it's G sharp ! ' And
Mary would calmly reply : ' I prefer playing G natural/
and go on doing it. I consider both parties in this matter
blameless and no apologies need be offered for either, but
I do blame the wretched governesses, who, themselves
incapable of distinguishing wrong from right notes, would
tell me to mind my own business and get on with my sum.
Now in extreme cases my mother knew very well when
wrong notes were being played, but having survived many
years of English drawing-room music she bore it with
relative equanimity, and the rest of my world were in the
same position as our governesses. Realising which I
became more and more certain that I was in a different
class, musically, to my surroundings, and that knowledge
did its slow work in my heart, as subsequent events were
to prove.
• •••••
In some ways I think we two were precocious children,
but on one subject — I speak for myself, not knowing how
it was with Mary — I was very innocent. When I was about
84 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
eleven, one awful day, after overhearing scraps of a con-
versation, or perhaps enlightened in a flash by a line of
poetry, I suddenly gathered that having babies and em-
bracing were mysteriously connected ; and despair fell
upon me, for shortly before I had, without enthusiasm,
allowed a boy I rather hated to kiss me in the rosery !
Like every child in a large family I was aware you could
not tell for a long time if a baby were on the way or not, and
for two or three months I would surreptitiously examine
my figure in the glass and fancy the worst. What agonising
suspense of after years can compare with that of a child
thus tortured, unable to confide in anyone, and wondering
as I did, should the dreaded thing happen, whether I would
drown myself in the deep water near the lock, or lay my
head on the rails, — perhaps in the tunnel, where people
would think it had been an accident ! It is because the
memory of that terror is as fresh to me nowr as if it had all
happened yesterday, that I am sure children ought to be
more enlightened on such matters than they are. Not
being a mother I fortunately need not bother my head
about the best way to do it.
This was of course a case of innocent imagination run
riot, but I remember another excess of imagination, in other
words one of those lies children tell in order to make them-
selves important, which, though no harm was done, troubled
my conscience for months and months. The son of one of
our neighbours was supposed to be courting a pretty visitor
(whom by the by he afterwards married), and one day I
reported that I had seen him kiss her in the garden — a
proceeding I no longer considered fraught with possible
tragedy but merely reprehensible. Every one at home
was thrilled with excitement, and presently I would have
given my head to confess it was an invention, but could
not summon up the requisite moral courage. Such were
my sufferings, however, that soon afterwards I registered
a vow, if only because romancing is so easy, to adopt a
line of strict truthfulness in the future. And that line I have
stuck to ever since — possibly with more zeal than discretion.
I have said that the whole course of my life was deter-
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 85
mined, little as she realised it, by one of our governesses.
When I was twelve a new victim arrived who had studied
music at the Leipzig Conservatorium, then in the hey-day
of its reputation in England ; for the first time I heard
classical music and a new world opened up before me.
Shortly after, a friend having given me Beethoven's Sonatas,
I began studying the easier of these and walked into the
new world on my own feet. Thus was my true bent suddenly
revealed to me, and I then and there conceived the plan,
carried out seven years later, of studying at Leipzig and
giving up my life to music. This intention waS announced
to everyone and of course no one took it seriously, but that
troubled me not at all. It seemed to me a dream that I
knew would come true in the fulness of time, but I was in
no hurry as to the when. Alas, all my life I have paid for
those seven wasted years ! I want to make it clear, that
this was no mere passing idea such as children entertain
and let go again ; when I came out I was not exactly faith-
less but slack about it during a few months, for reasons I
will explain by and by, but the decision was taken and cast
in iron once and for all.
My father's Aldershot command came to an end in 1872.
At that time, owing to a block in the promotion list, several
old Indian officers of his seniority were given the option
of retiring on a handsome pension with the rank of General ;
and as his family was large, and his next command probably
in India, he closed with the offer, sold his Cheshire home,
which was no longer in the country, and bought Frimhurst.
It was a sagacious choice of an abiding-place for an old
soldier, well within reach of contemporaries still in the
Army — and what I think he appreciated still more, old
subalterns of his, now some way up the ladder, who simply
adored him. On the stretch of heath land outside our very
gates, where most sham fights began, passed, or ended,
his own branch of the service could be watched, dashing
up and down the heather hills — the guns at any angle you
please — over banks, ditches, and gravel pits ; and not
being one of those who think everything is going to the
dogs since their own time, nothing interested him more
86 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
than mechanical and other improvements. Last but not
least, unless the wind was dead in the wrong direction, you
could take Greenwich time from the 9.30 P.M. Aldershot
gun. He generally dozed a little over his Times after
dinner, but at the faintest report would wake up, saying,
' There's the gun ! ' pull out his watch, and glance at the
clock on the chimney-piece (under which it was the most
stringent rule of the establishment to put the keys, after
locking up the wine or the postbag).
The house was enlarged, the cost exceeding the estimate
by a good deal, — we were never allowed to know exactly
how much — and a gravel lawn-tennis court was added,
all too near a certain unpleasant overflow, so that when
the wind was in a certain quarter there was no forgetting
his celebrated theory about ' a good open stink/
Being better off now we kept more horses ; fences
were set up in ' the little field/ and over these we were
allowed, nay, urged by my father, to lark to our heart's
content. Mary was not particularly keen on this amuse-
ment, but I remember after she had twice fallen off his
insisting on a third attempt, and amid shouted injunctions
to ' sit back and give him his head/ she sailed over in safety
and was much praised, as indeed she deserved. A more
ideal parent as regards encouraging his children to take
risks cannot be imagined, and throughout the unending
series of carriage accidents for which we gradually became
notorious, his first, I had almost written his only, question
was : ' Is the horse damaged ? '
He now developed an interest in the farmyard, to
which the niceties of flower gardening would have been
sacrificed but for mother, who though she appreciated
rich cream and new-laid eggs, objected to hens scratching
in borders and cows rambling on lawns. There was a certain
Jersey cow that gave more milk than any other two cows,
but only on condition of leading an untrammeled existence ;
many a morning at family prayers, the reader being the
only person who commanded a view of the rhododendrons,
an agitated whisper of ' Boy — cow ! ' would be addressed
by Papa to the backs of the kneeling servants, upon which
the page rose and stole away on tiptoe. And presently
i867-72 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 87
the Lord's Prayer was punctuated by sounds of admonish-
ment, reinforced with whacks.
That Jersey cow was a character — what in the strange
working-class slang of to-day would be called ' chronic.'
Even in the depths of winter she rebelled against the
cowhouse, and insisted on roaming in deep snow, wrapped
up in sacking. One winter she appeared in a new costume,
a beautiful Aubusson carpet, by no means worn out but
which my mother had wearied of and relegated prematurely
to the sheds, where it was appropriated by the cowman —
not for domestic use but for the Jersey. The pattern
was all sheaves of corn and wreaths of flowers, and years
afterwards we learned that the children believed the idea
was to persuade the cow it was summer and induce her
to yield more milk.
I fancy some of our governesses were scandalised at
the vivid interest taken by the whole family in certain
incidents of farmyard life. This tender-hearted cowman
was a Crimean veteran of middle age, whose snow-white
head was accounted for by the sympathetic legend that
it had been frozen during the campaign. But as he shared
the weakness of most old soldiers of his day, and as the
cow-doctor was none other than the patriarch who de-
manded one Saturday night that the hedges should be
cut back, it is not surprising that our cows often died at
critical moments in their career. I remember one evening
the page rushing in after dinner to say the calf was born
and the cow very bad, whereupon all of us except mother,
whom nothing short of the house being on fire would drive
out of doors at such an hour, flew in a body to the cow-
house. The scene was illumined by guttering lanterns
held by the two experts, who, swaying backwards and
forwards, were solemnly shaking their heads and murmuring
in husky duet : ' It is not in Our Hands/ . . . Alas ! it
had been, and the poor cow paid the penalty. . . . And
I remember a less tragic sight that probably would not
astonish students of natural history as much as it did
us — the baby chickens of a non-domestically minded hen
cuddling up in the lower manger against the stable cat, who
mothered them jealously for as long as they would let^her.
88 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1867-72
To complete the list of my father's home activities as
country gentleman I will only add that on off days he
gave much thought to the kitchen garden, and of course
insisted on the oldest peas and beans being pulled first —
a well-known madness of all green-growers (I coin this word
with conviction). But occasionally my mother would
upset everything by sailing into the garden and imperiously
pointing out certain vegetables, and that night at dinner
there would be a minor domestic scene. One feels certain
that this is exactly what went on between Adam and Eve
after their expulsion from Eden, if not before.
Lastly, as has been said elsewhere, it was now that he
threw himself into county work, with an energy and
thoroughness which has remained a tradition in that part
of Surrey to this day.
CHAPTER X
1872 AND 1873
I HAVE hinted that the behaviour of Mary and myself did
not always give satisfaction, one of our habits that roused
disapproval being the innocent one of keeping diaries. We
made rather a mystery of it, and I suppose that was the
crime. At length, goaded on probably by aunts and cousins,
the authorities gave a hint that the habit must be dropped,
and what was worse, that the diaries might possibly be
confiscated. Thereupon we decided to bury them, and I
always think our choice of a cemetery was peculiar. Of
course we kept rabbits, and inside the rabbit run I had con-
structed one of my too, too solid tables and a stool or so.
Here many pages of the diaries were written, and perhaps
that is the reason why one dark night we committed them
to earth, coffined in a biscuit box, in that particular place,
determined to resist to the death any attempt to make us
divulge the spot. We were in grim earnest about it,
feeling, I think rightly, that this would be unwarrantable
interference with the rights of the individual. Possibly
our parents came to some such conclusion themselves or
perhaps sense of humour prevailed ; anyhow the diaries
were left to rot in peace.
One of our elder cousins, Hugo J.'s sister, wrote and
dedicated to her godchild Mary such a charming little
poem on this incident, that I am delighted to find Mary
still possesses it, and give it here.
Oh Mary ! Mary ! quite contrary !
How does your garden grow ?
Written leaves, not rotten leaves
Are beneath that sod, I know !
89
90 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
You've planted the strangest plant, I hear,
You've sown the strangest seed —
Now, will it bloom a fragrant flower
Or will it rise a weed ?
Will those pallid leaflets ever shoot
Unfed, uncheered by you ?
Or can they grow without a root ?
Oh say, what can they do ?
O tell me if those leaves will blow,
And will the fruit be fair ?
And will the Spring's first gentle breath
Awake the spirit there ?
Or will the ever-falling rains,
The balmy evening dews
Efface, instead of brightening,
Their well-known inky hues ?
The summer zephyr could not wake
The life within those leaves,
Nor morning sun, nor noontide ray
Nor breezy dewy eves !
The sunshine of thine eyes alone
Could reach that plant so rare,
Thy hand alone unfold the leaves
And read the record there !
Flowers from their stalk divided
Droop, fall, and fade away . . .
Diaries, from their writers parted
Must they not decay ?
Months afterwards we privately exhumed the diaries,
but by that time some other craze held us in its grip and
the charm was gone. For my part, disgusted by the un-
savoury appearance of my heart's records, I threw them on
the fire ; and it is to be hoped that we both of us gave up at
the same time a habit to which we were secretly addicted,
i872-73 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 91
of being ' found ' in becoming attitudes on sofas and in bow-
windows.
Meanwhile the governess question had become a com-
plicated one, owing to the fact that the younger members
of the family were growing up and had to be educated
too. A supplementary instructress was tried but it was
not a success, for No. i considered it beneath her dignity
to associate with nursery governesses, and No. 2 spent more
time in weeping and retailing her grievances to her pupils
than in teaching them the three R's. In despair my parents
began to wonder whether Mary and I had not better be
sent to school.
The idea was not readily entertained, for at that time
it was not considered the thing to let your girls associate
with Heaven knows whom under a strange roof. As usual,
when in difficulties, my mother consulted her neighbour
Mrs. Longman, whose husband, head of the great pub-
lishing firm, built and lived at Farnborough Hill (since
bought by the Empress Eugenie) and whose family con-
sisted, like ours, of six girls and two boys. This friend
warmly recommended a school at Putney, kept by an old
governess of theirs, which put quite a different complexion
on the matter. Also, when approached by my mother,
Miss D. thought well to intimate casually that among her
pupils were the daughter of a Baronet and the daughters
of two Honourables. Thus it came to pass — as we were
told because we were so unmanageable, but really because
there was nothing else to be done — that we were packed
off to school in 1872.
On the day of our departure Bob, who was then about
five, remembers us sitting side by side on a sofa in the
bow-window, very erect and serious, in long black coats
with broad braid, and mauve scarfs tightly tied in a huge
bow under our chins, the long ends floating. It was all most
solemn, and he felt sorry for us without knowing why.
At that time all we had to show for large expenditure
in the schoolroom was a mere smattering of French, German,
and the usual subjects, the most valuable part of our
education — a part moreover which had nothing to do
92 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
with governesses — being the knowledge of the Bible
Anglicans acquire automatically, and a love of Shakespere —
the last thanks mainly to Aunt Susan, who in her cold way
had strong literary proclivities, and a special devotion to
Shakespere which she passed on to Johnny. He it was
who first urged me to read ' Julius Caesar ' and kindled a
life-long passion which has known no ups and downs. All
schoolmistresses begin by addressing a remark of awful
affability to new pupils, and Miss D.'s to me was : * I hear
you are quite a Shakespere scholar ! '
My school life is a sort of block-memory ; I see few
details, but of course ' passions ' raged all the time. There
were walks in long procession of two and two ; once we
were led, my heart beating furiously, past the house
where I knew Jenny Lind lived. From allusions to her
triumphs in old volumes of Punch, and my mother's de-
scriptions of her supreme art, she had long been one of my
heroines, and if anyone had told me that one day I should
become fairly intimate with this striking and terrifying
personality I should have gone off my head on the spot.
The more usual thing was vague rambles across Putney
and Roehampton Commons, and I remember the pang of
joy and longing that always shot through me at one parti-
cular spot, then unspoiled by villas. It was a plateau-
edge where we always turned off to the left homeward — a
dip in the road, the yellow of the gravel where it cut through
the hill, and a blue distant expanse of happy lands where
people walked at their own pace and went home when they
felt inclined. Masters (' extras ') came from London to
teach us music, drawing, astronomy, and chemistry. I
remember the chemistry classes best, because of the breath-
less excitement as to whether the experiments would come
off ; sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't, but
there never was any doubt as to why schoolboys call this
branch of science ' stinks.' The master had one distressing
peculiarity, a drop hung for ever from the tip of his red
nose ; we used to wonder whether constant stooping over
jars of smoking chemicals makes noses insentient.
The music master was a black-bearded, spectacled little
German Jew, Herr A. S., and all the busts of Pericles and
1872-73 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 93
other great men in my ' Smaller History of Greece ' were
furnished with spectacles, had their beards inked, and thus
became Herr A. S. By this time I undertook the music
in our afternoon home services on Sundays as a matter of
course, composed, and made the girls learn, chants and
hymns, which bore the names of adored units in the choir
— my old system — and generally imposed myself musically.
Hence poor Herr A. S. thought he saw a unique opportunity
for spreading his reputation as composer, and ' L'Alouette/
' Le R6ve ' and all the rest of them, French names being
in favour because of the success of ' La Priere d'une Vierge/
were hopefully unpacked. I rather fancy it was part of
his contract that parents should have a certain number of
these works booked to them at face value. But I wouldn't
even look at them — a fact he recalled to me with infinite
good humour in after years, when, an old, asthmatic wreck
in retirement, he used to struggle up from the country to
hear my work performed. And indeed is it likely that
one already deep in Schumann, Schubert, and Beethoven
would add Herr A. S. to the list ?
The whole school, except those whose parents struck
at the expense, were taken up to Mr. Kuhe's yearly Grand
Benefit Concert ; there for the only time in my life I heard
Patti, and, strange incomprehensible fact, what struck me
most was her coquettish way of trotting on to the platform,
followed by a display of ecstatic surprise at the plaudits
that lifted the roof — an experience as common to her as
the sun rising. The other day, genuinely overwhelmed by
her incomparable rendering of ' Voi che sapete ' on the
gramophone, it was bitter to reflect I had once heard the
real woman and cannot recall the ghost of a thrill. Was
it my childish contempt for florid music — she sang some-
thing by Donizetti, I think — combined with insane dislike
of affectation even as innocent and ritualistic as hers, or
does some spiteful god amuse himself by turning us deaf
and stupid for a while ? . . . We were also taken to the
Royal Academy Exhibition, and again a blank in my memory
occurs, to account for which no occult agency need be
sought. To the National Gallery we were not taken, which
sufficiently characterises girls' schools of that period.
94 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
On Sundays we were marched to Putney Church, and
compared our personal appearance with that of a rival
school on the other side of the chancel. I think we were all
in love with the cherub-faced high-born curate, less so with
another clergyman, who, I fear, took more than a pastoral
interest in some of the prettier members of his flock ; any-
how we knew Miss D. had reasons for making -ure that one
of the staff should be present during his religion classes.
He prepared me for Confirmation and I cordially disliked
him, but the great thing that was to happen during that
spring of 1873 dwarfed all thoughts of any imperfections
in the agent.
I hope I have shown how full of brightness and interest
our lives were ; yet looking back and asking myself whether
on the whole happiness or unhappiness had predominated
in mine, I have no hesitation in answering, unhappiness.
How should it be otherwise ? If I was violent enough out-
wardly to be called ' the Stormy Petrel ' it was nothing
to the violence within. Ambitious, wilful, torn by storms
of anger, despair, and love, feeling that somehow I was of
different stuff to the boys and girls I associated with, and
had that in me that not even my mother, who loved me
dearly and knew me so well in some ways, ever suspected,
there was no one to help me into the path I afterwards
found for myself with so much difficulty. I was merely
considered an exceptionally naughty rebellious girl who
required snubbing ; no one saw anything there that merited
encouragement. I had fits of religion, and like all people
of a certain temperament had always been prone to in-
coherent, anguished prayer, after which I knew peace for
a while ; but these moods passed, and back rushed the
old stress and misery.
Then came my Confirmation ; and when the Bishop
laid his hands on me — a solemn moment I remember, strange
to say, more vividly than my first Communion — I believed,
as young people will believe at such times as long as this
earth shall endure, that now my troubles were over once
and for all. And yet in a book a school friend had just
given me I might have found a warning that this could
..
i872-73 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 95
not be hoped for, that if even a small modicum of one's
early fervour can be retained for ordinary working use
one must be thankful.1 And of course the inevitable hap-
pened, but the spirit of those Confirmation days never
seemed to me incomprehensible and impossible to recapture
as it does to some. Nor was it, for since then I have been
through similar periods ; none is quite like the last, but
the insweeping sea is always the same, — a sea that lifts
and does not drown.
On one point I have never been able to see clearly.
My ' Imitation ' is deeply scored in chapters such as the ones
on ' Inordinate Affections ' or ' Private Love hindereth
most from the Chief est Good/ and when I came to know
Greek art I instantly understood that excess and perfection
are enemies ; yet on the other hand this world and the
million worlds around us live by fire. . . ! There is a
mental movement H. B. called ' going back to your top ' ;
if you propound to a child a problem beyond his intelligence,
he will stare at you for a moment and quietly go on with
his game. After meditating the subject of passion versus
balance I always go back to my top with a sense of peculiar
relief. . . .
In connection with this part of my school life I must
mention one absurd incident that assumed for me the pro-
portions of a tragedy at the time. Three days after my
Confirmation the most adored of all my school friends, a
very religious girl, extremely High Church like myself and
with a face like a sheep, met my old aversion Lord Radstock
at a garden party, and a week later became a Plymouth
Sister ! . . . Instinctively I felt that this dreadful
conversion was not unconnected with the fact that Lord
Radstock was probably the first peer she had ever met
in her life, and down toppled the idol from her pedestal.
I was at heart a little snob myself in those days and may
have done her injustice . . . but ... I fancy not !
On the whole Mary and I agree that we learned a good
deal at Miss D/s, but I still think among the most important
things were being taught how to darn stockings, and how
1 Imitation of Christ, Part iii. Chapter viii.
96 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
to put clean linen back in the drawers, that is at the bottom
of the pile — a principle I insisted on when I came to have
a house of my own. As for darning, it is more than needle-
work ; it is bridge-building, it is house-building (for hus
you lath and plaster a ceiling), it is gardening (for thus you
make something grow where there was nothing). In short
it has the charm of all jobs that begin with the formula:
' take a hole/ But I never do it if I can help it.
Memories of home-life now assumed a passionate aspect
of course, and on this theme we wrote words to a tune
then in vogue — a tune so jolly and shapely that I think
it must be by Offenbach. This song became a great feature
in our repertory, and the last verse, ' to be sung slowly
and sadly/ ran :
But soon we shall return
To that horrible Mango Chutnee
We eat with mutton cold
In our school which is at Putney . .
Oh dear ! Oh dear !
Let's shed a silent tear !
Chorus (at a cheerful pace).
But hurrah, hurrah, our lessons are past !
Hurrah, hurrah for freedom at last !
Hurrah, hurrah, though time flies fast
We'll make of it all we can !
Let me say chutnee was not dragged in unlawfully ;
we really did have it twice a week, and that it happens
to rhyme with Putney is a dispensation.
Our school books, many of which I still have, are scored
with home souvenirs. Before we were exiled we had made
hot friends with a young soldier, Walter Lindsay by name,
whose regiment, a very smart one we were glad to think,
was under canvas on the Chobham Ridges. He was really a
dear fellow, as the fact of his preferring to all other company
that of a couple of children proves, and I have a huge Atlas
on the blank sheets of which are no fewer than fifteen
portraits of our hero as viewed by my adoring eyes. He was
very good-looking, but his nose was certainly too long for
the canons of perfect beauty . . . and young artists do not
mince matters. Years and years after I met him again —
i872-73 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 97
still very good-looking and father of one of the most beautiful
girls in London — and of course told him about the Atlas,
which so delighted him that I promised to do him tracings
of some of the portraits. But when I produced them a
grave look passed over his face, and I realised with secret
amusement that he was upset at his nose having assumed
such proportions even in the eyes of a child ! . . . Truly
vanity is not a feminine monopoly.
At this period Mary and I were much given to writing
poetry, and I still possess a collection of my plays and
verses. Anything more totally devoid of talent cannot
be imagined; there is but little sense of rhythm in the
verse, the funny poems are dreadfully arch, and the serious
ones insufferably sententious and commonplace. In my
case this phase started before I went to school, in an effusion
which I overheard a misguided relation say was ' remark-
able/ and which celebrated a phenomenon which really
was remarkable — Northern Lights of unexampled brilliancy.
If only as a warning to other young poets with indulgent
and uncritical relations, here it is :
THE AURORA BOREALIS
I have seen the bright heavens in many an aspect
When sparkling in starlight and beaming with light,
But I never have seen it so gloriously brilliant
As when the Aurora is shining at night.
I have watched its faint ray growing stronger and stronger,
Until its rich crimson is lighting the sky,
I have watched it grow fainter and fainter each moment
Until it has faded to darkness on high.
We must think, when we see this great work of our Maker,
What poor feeble creatures we are in His sight,
For who under Heaven could make the Aurora
To shine like the day in the midst of the night ? . . .
It is meant to remind us of God our Creator,
To show us our weakness compared to His might !
(I myself thought this tacking on of two extra lines
rather good.)
VOL. I. H
98 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
The poems of the Putney period show some slight
improvement ; there are a few verses on ' Confirmation '
which are really sincere and not unmusical ; I expect they
were more than directly inspired by ' The Christian Year/
I had not re-met this poem when I wrote about my Con-
firmation, and am interested to see there is no reference
to the Holy Communion, and that the best verse begins :
When the Bishop now is laying
His hands upon us, praying . . .
— the sort of incident which gives a memoir-writer confi-
dence. Most of the other effusions, whether black tragedy,
or in comic vein, lampooning our masters and mistresses,
are in the cantering metre of the ' Aurora Borealis ' ;
perhaps this was the influence of Byron whom I greatly
admired, or possibly it was an inheritance of Bonnemaman
and her ' Gipsy King/ But there was one case that
evidently nothing but blank verse could meet.
UNREQUITED LOVE
(A Fragment)
And thus we stake our lives on one great love,
And thus our hopes are shattered when we find
That earthly love hath Summer, and a Spring . . .
Alas that Love should have a Winter too ! . . .
I staked my all upon the raft of Love
And peacefully it floated down Life's stream.
But then Life's river is a changing stream ;
Sometimes 'tis rapid, sometimes slowly winds
Through pastures green, with flowers dipping in
Their blushing faces when the noonday sun
Waxes too strong. Sometimes through mountain gorge
It tears and foams, rending the trees and bushes,
Waking a thousand echoes in the rocks . . .
My raft was floating onward peaceably —
It struck upon a rock — a crash — it sank ! —
O cruel rock ! for now my heart is torn
From all it held the dearest upon earth . . .
She cares not for my love . . . and so I mourn
In Solitude !
1872-73 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 99
Sometimes I wonder if, in a future state, what artists
look on as their matured masterpieces will strike them as
the above ' poems ' strike their author to-day.
This literary phase of ours resulted in one incident
more ludicrous even than our own productions. During
one summer holidays Fred Longman, a cultured nephew of
our neighbour's, lent us a periodical in which was what he,
and of course we, considered a wonderful poem. The
subject was a priest's love affair and it seemed to us the
last word of tragic passion. Mary and I at once copied
it out, but somehow or other the matter came to the ears
of our elders. Mr. Longman, appealed to as an incontest-
able authority, pronounced the verdict — I remember his
exact words — that the thing was ' revolting in thought
and disgusting in expression/ and profuse apologies were
tendered for his nephew's indiscretion. Foreseeing that
we should be called upon to destroy our copies, we actually
spent the whole of a stormy night committing the poem
to memory, aided by flashes of lightning which illumined
the doomed manuscripts — whether because this seemed the
most suitable illumination, or because we had no candle,
I am unable to say. Thus it is possible to summon the
first stanza from the shades of oblivion.
I was a priest and I should not love her,
I was a man and my love was hers !
Turn it and turn it from cover to cover,
The book of my soul no more avers
In my deed's defence than this one thing ;
That Love held my will in his fierce hot hand,
And swayed it, and shook it, and tore it asunder
As your tropic earthquake tears the land,
As your lightning leaps with his voice of thunder
To smite the trees which were green in Spring,
And grind the spires of granite to sand !
[In those days the possessive pronoun before earth-
quake and lightning puzzled me ; ' why your ? ' I asked
myself. And nowadays, having grasped the rhetorical
nature of that pronoun, I ask, still more insistently : ' Why
your ?'...]
ioo IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1872-73
To return to the priest. Passing from generalities to
facts, he now tells us that ' oft when the organ did grumble
and groan for the puny human fingers that vexed it ' —
(I thought that bit wonderful) he would invoke ' the
forms and faces of women that dwell in the seats whence
the poor young angels fell.' Of these he remarks ' a body
each had, but Heaven unsexed it/ and needless to say
such anaemic visions had no chance against flesh and blood
realities like ' my lady with rich warm lips, and love in
her face and finger tips, and great grey eyes that looked
out from afar, and the great arched neck, made, sure, for
caressing ' (these must have been the passages Mr. Longman
had in mind when he used the term ' disgusting in
expression/ for I cannot recall anything more ardent).
And so this tragic affair went on, accompanied by ' the
moan of the selfish sea, its moan as up to the moon it strove/
until, after a good deal of perfunctory prayer on the beach,
the moment came when ' in the small poor hall of her father's
house ' he * felt and knew that the Fate did come and the
Curse did fall/
I have forgotten a good deal of the middle part,
though, as I write, details come back to me that tend to
further justify Mr. Longman ; but I well remember the
last stanzas, in which grave doubts as to the future are
expressed, the hero going so far as to ask himself : * Where
Love did reign shall Despair and Hate blacken us both for
the Hell below ? ' Undaunted, however, by this distress-
ing possibility, his last words are pitched in an heroic
key to which Mary and I did ample justice, chanting out
the final couplet in loud exultant unisono :
Yet I feel no fears for the vengeful years,
But lift up my face to defy them all !
When I reflect how often the thought of this whole incident
has made me laugh, I bless the mental effort that engraved
a few hundred lines of inflated rubbish into the brains of
two silly schoolgirls.
CHAPTER XI
1873 TO 1875
IN the course of periodical returns to the scene of our
past schoolroom activities, one thing impressed itself
strongly on our minds. We had always been given to
understand that the everlasting rumpusses and governess
crises were owing to our peculiar temperaments and general
unmanageableness ; but it was obvious that exactly the same
thing was going on now, also that the class of instructress
had not changed since our day. But though we had had
some queer specimens to deal with, Mary and I never
achieved anything to compete with the Queen of the
children's series — a lady who wore stockings woven in
black and white rings, and remarked it would be madness
for anyone whose legs were short of perfect symmetry to
venture on that pattern. ' I may tell you/ she added,
' that when I was young, gentlemen used to ask me to
walk up ladders so that they might look at my ankles.'
The bewitching ankles were still exhibited to any large
four-legged animal she might meet, before whom, catching
up her petticoats, she would fly like the wind. On such
occasions she was not above negotiation, a fact taken
advantage of by her pupils, who would lead her innocently
through a field in which, as they knew, one or other of
the horses had been turned out. Paddy had a way of
gallopping after passers-by with his mouth wide open,
which, though meant in the friendliest spirit, had such
an effect on Miss Gobell's nerves that she would bribe
them with the promise of a half-holiday to take her home
by some other route. In fact, our successors were exactly
the same heartless young brutes that we had been ourselves.
191
102 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1873-75
Judging by its repercussion in the schoolroom, I think
the drama must have been on the up-grade in those days ;
certainly the children's performances struck me as more
vivid and realistic than ours ever were. I well recall one
particular charade acted on the landing outside the school-
room. For the whole word a huge target was to be dis-
played, and it was the province of a little neighbour of
ours (a child of excessive temperament), armed with a rifle,
cap and all complete, to fire home the point. When the
time came, however, overpowered by excitement she forgot
to fire, and running amuck amongst the audience prodded
right and left with her weapon, screaming ' Bull's-eye !
bull's-eye ! ' The success of this unexpected finale may
be imagined, but remembering what I have gone through
myself on the operatic scene, owing to points of stage-
management being missed or bungled, I warmly sympa-
thise with the fury of Miss Grace Pain's fellow actors.
I remember, too, one bit of dialogue that brought the
house down, for the whole establishment, especially the men
servants, heard it at least once a week in real life.
SCENE : The Drawing Room
PAPA. Where are the keys ?
MAMA. Under the clock.
PAPA. They're not under the clock.
MAMA. But they must be ; I put them there myself.
PAPA. I tell you they're not there. When did you
have them last ?
MAMA. After luncheon of course, when Violet locked
up the wine. It was bitterly cold in the dining-room because
you always will tell David not to pile up the coals, and I
remember going straight to the fireplace after lunch, and
putting the keys under the clock before I settled down to
try and get warm again
PAPA. Well then someone has taken them away and
not put them back. If people go meddling with the keys
and don't put them back, how the devil (fumbles in
his trouser pockets). Why, bless my soul ! I had them in
my pocket all the time !
1873-75 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 103
I may add that the children got up these things by
themselves, the help of their elders being neither asked
for nor required.
During these short respites from Putney, Mary and I
pursued pleasure with the avidity of people who know
there is a term set to it, and I am reminded that our neigh-
bours, whose houses were a fortune to us in holiday time,
have not yet been spoken of as fully as they deserve.
Like the Longmans, most of them came under the usual
heading — peaceful, normal people, nations without a
history ; but there were certain others with whom I rather
wonder we were allowed to associate so freely. I suppose
our parents had acquired with years an easy-going, take-
things-as-you-find-them philosophy, such as befits people
not very well off, who have large families keen on enjoying
themselves.
One neighbouring establishment was really fantastic ;
an immensely fat, clever, lady of the house, rumoured to
have been a nursery governess in early youth ; a husband,
generally absent on journeys connected with some unspeci-
fied business, who was said to be addicted to drink ; and
an aged father stowed away in an annex, who was taken
by my father, on the occasion of a first visit, to be the
gardener, and sworn at for not opening a gate quick enough.
There were many children, including two schoolboys in love
with Mary and me respectively (though needless to say
Mary eventually mopped up both) and a daughter, of an
age to be ' such a nice friend for Alice/ Further there
was a Mr. Y — , ' our dear old friend Y./ whose resem-
blance to one of the boys was so remarkable as to dumb-
founder casual callers. But above all there was a hand-
some old peer in Holy Orders, with a flowing grey beard
and the grand manner, who may be said to have constituted
a regular part of this curious household. Charitable neigh-
bours would underline the fact that his invalid wife was also
in the house, but as she was kept hidden in a side wing
and seldom if ever seen, whereas he and his hostess drove
out together daily, bulging right and left over the sides
of a tiny Victoria, scandal continued to simmer. At some
104 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1873-75
Christmas festivity to which Johnny and Maunsell B—
were invited, the rarely present master of the house was
reported to have burst into tears and invited anyone who
dared breathe a word against his dear wife to come out
on to the lawn and fight him. He was gently conducted
to his bedroom by the peer, and everyone tacitly agreed
to go on as if nothing had happened. We frequently
played mixed cricket with the family, and it was pointed
out that the rector, who liked a glass of good port, always
ate his Sunday dinner at that hospitable board.
Another distant neighbour was a well-known old Whig,
supposed to have stood in his youth for the figure of ' Barney
Newcome ' ; but that I cannot believe, for though an egoist
and a terrible snob, he had qualities that Barney had not,
being witty, well-read, kindly, and what my father called
rather an old rip. With his fluffy white hair and coal-
black eyebrows, his passionate love of poetry, his eighteenth-
century nonchalance and cynicism, his extreme good nature
and worldliness, he was even then a figure belonging to
the past. Statesmen and members of the great world
would now and again pass the week-end with him, and
knowing that the best receipt for keeping young is to mingle
with youth, he would be at some trouble to secure the
presence of neighbouring young girls.
The subsequent happenings were standardised ; he
would entice you into the library to look at the bindings
of some new books ; and then an arm would steal round
your waist, and various pinchings and squeezings, graduated
according to the receptivity of his companion, had to be
endured. Even the most recalcitrant, such as I, were
begged to ' give an old man a kiss/ and it is strange he did
not guess with what repulsion one met those old, cold lips.
What could we do ? lie had tried his best to give us a
good time, and we felt this was the only return we could
make ; but it was extremely horrible, and I often wonder
how far he went with more facile subjects than myself.
Once he gave me a sovereign, — not, be it remarked, for
favours .received — and when I hesitated to accept it he
said : ' My dear, take an old man's advice, never refuse
a good offer.' I thought the advice sound and have
1873-75 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 105
followed it ever since. It appears that when his hour
struck, this old heathen made a beautiful and well-mannered
end, apologising to his nurse, like Charles II, for being such
an unconscionable time dying.
Now my parents knew all about these two households
but never dreamed of preventing our going there. I cannot
say how entirely I approve this tacit recognition of the
truth that it takes all sorts to make a world ; and as in the
country you can't pick and choose, better let your children
find their own way about. If I had a family of my own
I would bring them up on the same lines.
In the country, what are nominally children's parties
are often besprinkled with grown-ups, and if only for that
reason Mary and I were not above attending many such
in our Christmas holidays. Mary was now an extremely
pretty girl with a natural taste for flirtation, and the eternal
trouble was that, being two years older than I, she had
a better chance — even if other things were equal, which
they were not — of securing grown-up partners, the secret
ambition of every child in the room. As a matter of fact
they swarmed round her. Once at a dance at the Long-
mans, I the surefooted one, the athlete of the family, suffered
the anguish and humiliation of slipping up on the parquet
floor, and coming down on all fours beside my partner (only
a boy of course) whose head nearly cracked the boards.
Later on, Mary, who was eating an ice, and being ministered
to by a nephew of Mrs. Longman's, Edward Bray (a very
good-looking Cambridge man, with romantic grey eyes)
said to me airily over her shoulder : ' You must have
knocked at least fifty off your price/ If ever murder
was in anyone's heart it was in mine at that moment !
I had recently performed a rather bold feat. There
was a big drain in our grounds, about two feet in diameter,
that carried off the rainwater from the wood into the canal,
and the season being dry, I had entered this drain from
the canal side and crawled right through it — some thirty
yards perhaps — pushing the unwilling dog in front of me
as a precaution against mephitic gases, and bribing Violet
106 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1873-75
with ^d. to follow close in my wake. One day when I
was bragging, as not infrequently happened, of my pluck,
Mary casually remarked that she had told Edward Bray
about it, and all he said was : ' Pah ! how disgusting ! '
. . . Slowly I realised he had mistaken the nature of the
drain ! . . . This was the sort of thing that would make
me murmur to myself in the silent watches of the night :
' I wish I was dead — I wish I was dead ! ' . . .
Despite this grey-eyed Adonis and many other fervent
admirers, Mary was not unmindful of earlier ties. Maunsell
B., still Johnny's great friend, now considered himself
seriously, though secretly, engaged to her — much to the
agitation of his mother, who saw what was going on, and
though a great friend of our mother's, had no intention of
letting her darling and only son marry a girl without money.
Meanwhile Mrs. B. was far away, and Mary on the sofa
beside him, where they would sit in the dusk and ask for
soft music. Being, as I said, favourable to love affairs in
general, I met their views, and am glad to believe gave
satisfaction, the first movement of the ' Moonlight Sonata '
being considered especially sustaining to the emotions.
Whoever else did not appreciate my music, those two
certainly did.
During one of our summer holidays I myself was favoured
for the first time with amatory speeches from a grown-up,
though in rather a public manner, for they were bawled
from the branches of a big apple-tree whereon grew the
ruddiest apples I ever saw, and which was no distance
from the dining-room windows. The climber, one Colonel
Mclvor, was a total stranger to all of us except my mother,
into whose life he had leaped with one chivalrous bound,
dragging her, so to speak, from beneath the wheels of a Paris
omnibus. One can imagine how this romantic incident
appealed to her imagination, how he was pressed to look
us up in England, and arrived one day, just in time for
luncheon, on a short visit.
He described himself as a * real soldier of fortune, one
who has fought for lost causes all over the world/ and had
with him a collection of ' grandeurs,' in the shape of foreign
orders, which my father wholly failed to identify. If the
1873-75 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 107
publicity of his declaration, which took place soon after
luncheon, was rather disconcerting, I supposed these were
open-hearted ways acquired under warmer skies than ours
and was flattered on the whole. But as the day went on
his tales of adventure by field and flood became more and
more incoherent, so much so that after dinner a strong
hint was given him by my father to leave next morning
by an early train, which he did. We afterwards found out
he had proposed both to Alice and Mary, and according
to her account had made improper advances to the children's
governess ; so I ceased boasting of my conquest.
Colonel Me Ivor was far from being our only improvised
visitor, for my mother, bored with English humdrumness
and attracted by all things foreign, would sometimes catch
at very queer straws that floated past her in Homburg or
Wildbad waters. For instance there was a certain Madame
de S., a Belgian, who I dimly felt, even then, after a certain
conversation, was not quite in her place in the bosom
an English family ; she also was more or less bundled
out of the house. Cultivated, well-dressed, with perfect
manners, I have sometimes wondered since whether she
was perhaps a White Slave agent.
At length came a day to which I had always looked
forward with dread ; Mary, who was now of an age to
come out, left Miss D.'s for ever. I was miserable without
her, and grateful for being allowed eventually to leave
school before my own time was up, poor Nina being sent to
work off the pre-paid terms in my place. Once home I
made mother give me lessons in Italian, which delighted
us both, for she was a capital teacher ; also I went in for
a Cambridge Local Examination and was plucked owing
to grievous incapacity for doing sums. Johnny, who had
been kind and interested, was really distressed at my
failure, but cousin Hugo wrote a mock consolatory letter
about my now being entitled to write M.A. after my name,
that is Mulled in Arithmetic — a joke I didn't think at all
funny.
It was in the summer of 1875 — a summer that in any
case was to rob her of her favourite daughter — that the great
io8 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1873-75
sorrow of my mother's life happened. Alice had been
engaged for some time to a young Scotsman, Harry
Davidson, and the couple were waiting for an impending
improvement in his prospects, when Mary, who had been
out but a short time, also became engaged, — not to Maunsell
B. but to Charlie Hunter, brother of a school friend of hers.
There was to be a joint wedding in July, and the invitations,
of which I had mercifully kept a list, had been sent out,
when it became evident that Johnny's slow martyrdom,
endured by him with marvellous fortitude and sweetness,
was coming to an end. For a fortnight he had suffered
from terrible headaches, as usual making no complaint,
and one night at dessert, taking up a biscuit, he said : ' How
queer, I can't read the letters on this biscuit/ He then
sank back, as we thought fainting, but a tumour on the
brain had burst, and he became unconscious by slow degrees,
his last conscious words being : ' Don't let this illness of
mine stop the girls' weddings/
We used to take it in turn to watch nightly beside his
bed, and when relieved spent the rest of the night on a sofa
in the Hall close by, so as to be ready if needed. One
night, after my watch was over, I stumbled and fell, and
there I was found when the housemaid came in the morning
to open the shutters, asleep on the floor . . . as I had fallen.
Such is the sleep hunger of youth. There had just been
time to cancel the invitations, but as it seemed that he
might linger for some time yet, the marriages took place
one morning at Frimley Church, none of the family but
myself being present. The bridegrooms went back to
London from the church door, and a few days afterwards
Johnny died. That afternoon the children had been sent
to a kind neighbour, and Nelly says that on their return
mother met them at the front door to tell them he was
dead, tears streaming down her face yet trying to smile —
a picture of grief that has remained with them ever since.
This was my first acquaintance with death, and the
sight of that strange unfamiliar face impressed me terribly
and painfully. The day after the funeral the married
couples departed, and I became the eldest at home.
CHAPTER XII
1875 AND 1876
ALL this time, whether at home or at school, the main
determination of my life, though sometimes obscured, had
never wavered ; it was like a basso ostinato, which, as sub-
sequent counterpoint studies showed me, will sometimes
be shifted to a less obvious position in the midst of other
voices and seem to the eye of ignorance to have vanished.
I certainly trifled with other ideas, such as marriage, travel,
becoming a Roman Catholic, or even a nun. This last
seems fantastic now, but after my Confirmation I held, as
I do still, only in quite another sense, that only one thing
matters, one's relation to God. And if so, how about
obedience to parents ? My father would never let me go
abroad willingly, if only for reasons of economy, and I
quite grasped that making an allowance to a married
daughter, whose future is no longer your business, is quite
another thing to financing a maiden's sterile whims. In
his mind's eye he would see me, no doubt, returned on
his hands a failure — to knock too late at doors in the
marriage market ; meanwhile his income was none too
large to keep the home going. After all, in the religious
life there would be scope for limitless passion — a belief
that I imagine induces many conversions — and Thomas a
Kempis had given me a foretaste of the ecstasy of renun-
ciation. In one of these moods I set to music and dedicated
to a latest ' passion,' a very religious woman whose name
was Louisa Lady Sitwell, a long piece of sacred poetry.
I wish I could look at that MS. now, but no doubt it went
into her wastepaper basket more than forty years ago,
and now she is dead.
109
no IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
A less sympathetic phase was Social Ambition. I had
read memoirs about Lady So-and-So governing the world
from her political salon, and used to spend hours studying
the Peerage and settling which Duke's eldest son was to
give me the position I was so well fitted to adorn. It
became a mania for the time, and as we knew no Dukes
and had no footing whatever in the great world, implied,
but for its piteous snobbishness, a great amount of imagina-
tive energy. I think it must have been in a departing
spasm of that craze that, in answer to ' What is your
greatest desire ? ' I wrote in someone's Confession Book,
' To be made a Peeress in my own Right because of Music ! '
Of course this matrimonial scheming was really a sort of
game, like taking a Continental Bradshaw and Atlas and
planning journeys round the world ; but I don't think it
was a nice game, and nothing but a firm intention to speak
the whole truth and nothing but the truth in these pages
makes me record the Social Ambition phase.
The point is that these temporary crazes blinked into
sight to vanish again, and back came the basso ostinato
more ostinato than ever — as I would take pains, by some
casual remark, to let my father know ; whereupon he would
angrily rustle his Times and mutter something about
' damned nonsense ! ' As for my mother, though she was
by way of backing him up, I thought she was secretly on
my side.
I always count the arrival of that governess who played
classical music to me when I was twelve as the first mile-
stone on my road ; suddenly, when I was least looking for
anything dramatic, the second milestone loomed into
vision — to my great excitement we learned that the com-
poser of ' Jerusalem the Golden,' a Mr. Ewing, in the Army
Service Corps, who had married one of the Gattys, in fact
' Aunt Judy ' herself, was stationed at Aldershot ! Even
my father, who hadn't an ounce of music in his compo-
sition, may have been moved by the news, for that hymn
tune, in which there is a sort of groping ecstasy confined
in ' Ancient and Modern ' fetters, was considered almost
as integral a part of the Church Service as one of the
JULIANA HORATIA EWING ("AUNT JUDY"), 1876.
1875-76 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON in
Collects. For my part I took it on trust that at last I
was to meet, not a poor musical hack like Herr A. S., but
a real musician. And I was right, besides which Mr. Ewing
turned out to be one of the most delightful, original, and
whimsical personalities in the world.
Mrs. Ewing and my mother were attracted to each
other at once and eventually became great friends. Mean-
while she took the whole adoring family to her heart, bade
us call her ' Aunt Judy/ wrote us all the most delightful
letters, and it is a great source of pride to us that the
Fair and donkey-riding incidents in her delightful story
' Jackanapes ' were suggested by Bob's adventures at our
own Frimley Fair. Her lustre was slightly dimmed by
a tendency to enjoy bad health ; I think she really was
not strong, but as her father once exclaimed, according to
his son-in-law : ' Dear Juliana is always better, thank you,
but never quite well.' I found a packet of charming letters
of hers to mother, written in the most beautiful hand
imaginable, which are half spoiled by constant references
to her poor back, her wretched head, the air-cushions people
lent her, the number of hours spent on the sofa after each
journey, and so on.
She was devoted to the other sex, more especially to
officers in the Royal Engineers, then supposed to have the
monopoly of brains in the British Army, and had discreet,
semi-intellectual and wholly blameless flirtations with two
or three of these at a time. I did not quite approve of
this — possibly from jealousy, for needless to say she at
once became the ruling ' passion/ As for her husband, he
of course demanded to hear me play and be shown my
compositions, after which he proclaimed to our little world
that I was a born musician and must at once be educated.
My father was furious ; he personally disliked my new
friend, as he did all people not true to the English type,
and foresaw that the Leipzig idea would now be endorsed
warmly by one who knew. The last straw was when Mr.
Ewing proposed that he himself should begin by teaching
me harmony ; but on this point my mother, urged on by
Aunt Judy, who had great respect for her husband's judg-
ment came over definitely into my camp. So it was
H2 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
settled that twice a week I was to drive myself over to
Aldershot and submit my exercises to his inspection.
These expeditions were the delight of my life. The
Ewings lived in one of the wooden huts of which in those
days the whole camp, with the exception of the barracks,
was constituted. They were stifling in summer and bitterly
cold in winter, but full of charm. Some had gardens, and
luckily the Ewings' was one of these, for both were gardeners
and dog lovers. I always brought her flowers from Frim-
hurst, picking with my own hand those she loved best,
and generally laid siege to her heart. At one moment I
must have apologised for ' gush ' — for in one of her letters
she writes : ' One word, my dear child, about " gush."
I think a habit of gush, like a habit of pious talk, without
being necessarily absolutely insincere is very objectionable
and both make me feel awkward to the last degree. But
few people are weaker than I am as regards the luxury of
being loved, and pace the physiologists and psychologists,
I like a little divine fire both in affairs of the heart and of
the soul.' Well ; she got it as far as I was concerned, but
though she delighted in, and had positive genius for young
people, I fancy my ardent devotion gratified her less than
the respectful homage of the R.E's. «
I used to arrive at n and have harmony instruction
till luncheon ; besides this my teacher analysed my compo-
sitions, and I felt how capital his criticism was, and how
pithily expressed. His real instrument was the organ,
but with fingers ill-adapted to piano playing, aided by a
very harsh cracked voice, he banged and bellowed his way
through the scores of ' Lohengrin ' and ' The Flying Dutch-
man/ and otherwise introduced me to Wagner. And very
definitely I remember that Beethoven appealed to me more
than Wagner or anyone else ; nevertheless I was bitten by
the operatic form of Art — a taste that was to be squashed
for the time in Leipzig later on — and wrote in yet another
Confession Book that my ' greatest desire ' was to have an
opera of mine played in Germany before I was forty — an
ambition fated to be realised. I still have, and really
educated myself on, a copy of Berlioz orchestration Mr.
Ewing gave me; it is full of characteristic marginal notes
1875-76 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 113
and ejaculations by the giver, and is a book I often look
into from sheer delight in its style.
After luncheon Mrs. Ewing would goodnaturedly correct
and comment on the English of little articles I wrote for
some obscure Parish Magazine, declaring she could turn
me into a writer by and by ; but I much preferred playing
with the dogs and talking to their owners while they
gardened.
Meanwhile my father's dislike of ' that fellow/ as he
called him, became fanatical. With all his geniality he
could be extremely forbidding in manner to people he
disapproved of, and had a way of looking at them without
seeing them, his moustache raised in a slight snarl, that
was worse than deliberate rudeness. The sight of even a
civilian untidy about the hair, necktie, and feet, irritated
him, and . . . Mr. Ewing was an officer ! Fortunately he
» never saw him in uniform, for difficult as it is to achieve,
my friend managed to look even more slovenly in uniform
than in plain clothes.
But the worst was Papa's persistent misreading of his
moral character. He must have known that bad digestions
often cause red noses, but in this case it was ascribed to
Scotch whiskey ; and, most infuriating of all, artists being
in his opinion ' loose fish/ he put his own construction
on my mentor's sentiment for me, which, though very warm
and keen, was devoid of the slightest trace of lovemaking.
Nor were matters improved by his learning from innocent
Aunt Judy herself that her husband was a successful
mesmerist — a talent cultivated exclusively, I fancy, in the
interest of his wife's ailments, but one can imagine how
its possession endeared him to the father of an impression-
able daughter ! Knowing nothing whatever about what
goes on in an artist's soul, he had no satisfactory clue to
the ardour of our alliance, besides which, as I noticed once
or twice in after life, unable to sway me himself, he resented
my being under the influence of any other man. In short
nothing but his reverence for Aunt Judy and her own
unfailing tact and charm staved off disaster for the time
being.
But it came at last ! I have always had a bad habit
VOL. I. I
ii4 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
of strewing my room with correspondence, and one of
Papa's amiable weaknesses was a tendency, as my mother
put it, to ' go poking about one's writing table/ On one
of these occasions he found a certain letter from Mr. Ewing 1
— a charming one, but hardly pleasant reading for parents
and guardians ! The result was such a terrific storm that
the harmony lessons, which in any case were running to
a close, the Ewings being under orders to leave Aldershot
shortly, came to an abrupt end.
My chief gain in this companionship was of course the
immense quickening of my musical life generally, and the
comfort of at last feeling ' the breath of kindred plumes
about my feet/ I always think of my first musician friend
with amusement, tenderness, and also great sadness, for if
ever nature fashioned an artist it was this man, condemned
by fate to live and die a drudge in the Army Service Corps.
It was during the Ewing epoch that, invited to stay
with the O'H/s, I paid a first, and certainly memorable
visit to Ireland. My host, more amazing than ever, was
evidently considered a character even in his own country,
but what I chiefly remember is riding a good deal with his
daughter, who, as we know, had ' a prettier seat on horse-
back than any girl in Ireland/ As a matter of fact she
had a beautiful figure, which swayed easily to the canter
of a thoroughbred that was never allowed to trot ; and as
I scornfully wrote home, under these circumstances it is
not difficult to present a graceful appearance in the saddle !
I even advanced with great caution some such theory to
her father, who replied with lightning rapidity that no
woman ever born could trot, and that he would shoot any
female belonging to him who made that sort of Judy of
herself.
His gentle wife was of the opinion that if I raised my
little finger I could make an excellent match out there with
a certain young squire, adding : ' You must remember
my dear, your poor father has still got four girls on his
hands ' — a remark I rather resented from the mother of
1 Appendix i (d), p. 145, No. 9.
1875-76 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 115
one, for in those spacious days the Psalmist's view of the
full quiver obtained, and we were proud of our large family.
I replied I was not going to marry, having other views.
This renders still more surprising the adventure that befell
me on my homeward journey.
On the way out I had b^n chaperoned across the
water by a delightful, exceedingly Irish friend of ours, wife
of the great soldier who afterwards became Field-Marshal
Sir Evelyn Wood, and was to rejoin her at the house of
her brother-in-law, Lord Fitzgerald, at Bray. There I met
a young barrister, Mr. William Wilde, with whom I played
tennis, and also discussed poetry, the arts, and more par-
ticularly philosophy, in remoter parts of the garden. I
saw at once he was very clever, and after dinner found he
was so musical as actually to put ends of his own to Chopin's
Etudes, for which, later on, I might have chopped oft his
fingers with the lid of the piano ; but I then thought it
quite wonderful and was glad to find this young man, of
whom that great lawyer my host thought highly, was going
to England next day in our boat.
We boarded her after dinner, and Willie Wilde, as they
all called him, pointed out to me a tall figure clad in dark
blue, leaning over the bulwarks and gazing seaward, as
' my brother the poet/ It was the great Oscar, who was
at once introduced, and on whom it afterwards appeared,
according to his brother, I had the good fortune to make
a favourable impression. But as he was as yet unknown
outside Oxford the fact left me unthrilled.
The night was glorious, a full moon and no wind, and
I was surprised that Mrs. Wood at once retired to her
cabin, for on the outward journey the sea had been like
a mill-pond and I thought the Irish Channel a much
maligned piece of water. Willie Wilde produced rugs and
he and I sat on deck discussing . . . Auguste Comte ! Pre-
sently I began to dislike the way the mast moved slowly
to and fro across the face of the moon, and must have made
some remark to that effect, for my companion flew off to
fetch some brandy which he said would put everything
right. The next moment I was staggering on his arm to
the ladies' cabin, and before the stewardess could intervene,
n6 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
to quote our old friend the enamoured priest, ' the Fate
did come and the Curse did fall.' Willie Wilde retired
hurriedly, but I was past caring who had seen what.
The next thing I remember is the train at Holyhead
and a long carriage with berths for men at one end and
for women at the other, between the two a sort of loose
box with one seat in it like a small guard's van. Mrs.
Wood, the most easy-going chaperone I ever met, and
who herself had been very sea-sick all night, vanished into
the ladies' territory, while Willie Wilde and I ensconced
ourselves in the loose box, he sitting on a Huntley and
Palmer's biscuit-tin at my feet. And there, in spite of
what had happened on the boat, he seized my hand and
began an impassioned declaration, in the middle of which
the biscuit-tin collapsed. This mishap, which surely
would have thrown an Englishman out of his stride, he
passed over with some remark I have forgotten, though
not its Irish gaiety, and resumed his tale of passion ; and
before the train steamed into Euston I was engaged to
a man I was no more in love with than I was with the
engine-driver !
At Euston we were met by Major Wood, who adored
his wife, and were hustled across to the Hotel, my lover
being of course of the party. Trains were few and far
between in those days, so we decided to tidy up and stay
there for some hours before proceeding to Waterloo, it
being understood that the Woods had letters to look through
and momentous matters concerning a new appointment to
discuss. They breakfasted in their own room and we two
in the Coffee Room, and when I ran upstairs to ask if I
might go off with Willie Wilde to see some old houses
(really to buy a ring) impatient voices from behind the
locked door answered in duet : ' Yes, yes, go by all means/
Finally I arrived at Frimhurst with a gold band ending
in two clasped hands on whichever was the correct finger,
and for once wearing gloves, my fiance having requested
that the affair be kept secret for the present.
On reflection I found this did not meet my views ;
averse to secrecy at all times, where was the fun of pulling
off an engagement before you are out if no one is to be
1875-76 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 117
any the wiser ? And then . . . the love letters began
to arrive ! Now although to propose to a girl five hours
after you have seen her being sea-sick is a proof, as I said
to myself, of true love, and though to go on proposing
after your seat has given way beneath you argues not
only passion but sense of humour, undefeatedness, and
other admirable qualities, the fact remains that I had
accepted this young man from flattered vanity, light-
heartedness, adventurousness, anything you please except
love. Consequently the letters, which I have since re-
read, and which are really very like the genuine thing,
rapidly put me off ; nor did I like his gentle but continued
insistence on the article of silence. In short before three
weeks were over, probably to his secret relief, I had broken
off the engagement, adding that I would like to keep the
ring as a souvenir ! And keep it I did, until a year or
two afterwards, when I lost it while separating two dogs
who were fighting in deep snow in the heather. Thus
ended my first and last engagement, the hero of which
I never saw again — a pity, for they say he became even
a better talker than his brother.
Soon after this adventure, the Ewings having mean-
while left Aldershot, I came out, but cannot remember
what my then frame of mind was. I had never dreamed
of putting through my musical plans till I should be really
grown up — that would have been too unreasonable — nor,
as I said, did there seem any need for special hurry. So
I suppose I thought it well to take a look at the world
of real balls and other festivities for which I was now
qualified.
On the whole it did not come up to expectations. I
loved, and still love, that soundest form of entertainment,
dining out ; not only from greediness and pleasant curiosity
as to what you are about to receive, but because of the
mingling of old and young, the talk and laughter, and
the gradual warming up of the atmosphere under the
influence of good cheer. After dinner I was always asked
to sing at once, and as I took care that no one else should
get at the piano the musical torture was eliminated.
n8 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
But the balls ! ... oh, the long drives in a tight white
satin bodice, and the entreaties to sit still and not crumple
your skirt ! My mother always said, too, that towards the
middle of the evening my head arrangements suggested a
Bacchante or a Cherokee Chief, and would waylay me in
corridors and tea rooms, with hairpins plucked from her
own head — as a mother bird in the interests of her off-
spring tears feathers from her breast. Little gratitude
and much impatience was her reward. But the dancing
itself was the greatest trial. I loved dancing with a delirious
' I wish I could die ' passion, especially when the music
appealed to me — and just then a man who called himself
' Waldteufel/ no doubt an Austrian, was writing beautiful
waltzes — but alas ! only one in ten partners had any notion
of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always
behind, never before the beat. Then it was that I would
hear a pretentious, fraudulent, utterly idiotic phrase which
I hope is no longer current in ball-rooms : ' I generally dance
half-time ' (!) Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller,
lighter partners by the scruff of the neck, so to speak,
and whirl them along in the way they should go, but I
saw they were not enjoying themselves, and oddly enough
I wanted these wretches to like dancing with me.
Another thing ; years had not yet purged me of snobbish-
ness, and I noticed that the ' smart ' young men, being
I suppose above such considerations, were the worst time-
keepers of all ; so that if I did not wish to be driven frantic
I must dance with the cads. And on the way home my
father would suddenly ask from his corner of the carriage :
' Who was that nasty looking fellow you were dancing with
so much ? ' (He always pronounced his a's in north-
country fashion, as in the word ' cap/ which made the
adjective still more damaging.) Since then I have come
to the conclusion that the best sort of Englishman we breed
nowadays, however it may have been in Shakespere's
time, is ' the man that hath not music in his soul/ or indeed
artistic proclivities of any kind. There are exceptions of
course, such as my dear Mr. Ewing and others I could
name, but I fear the rule holds good.
Nor were these the only drawbacks ; if I went to a ball
1875-76 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 119
it was to dance, and for no other reason, but I soon found
out this is a very incomplete theory of balls. Being a self-
sufficing person, who didn't want to cling or be clung to
except in the way of dancing, what was I doing in this
ante-chamber of matrimony, the ball-room ? It was the
old trouble cropping up again of knowing that between
my world and me a gulf was fixed, that I was a wolf in
sheep's clothing, in fact a fraud. Talent for flirtation
I had none — that wants another temperament, not
passionate but either light or sensual — and my attempts
were amateurish and half-hearted, like the childish love-
affairs with schoolboys. Then too there was the humiliating
infuriating idea, that if I was ' nice ' to a man he would
think I wanted to marry him! Notwithstanding these
disabilities, being young and not ugly I did pull off one or
two little flirtations, or rather had an admirer here and
there whom I fear I encouraged with a view to starting a
' proposal list/ But nothing much resulted.
There was, however, one passing moment of sentimental
weakness, and consequent unfaithfulness to my big purpose,
which must be recorded. I had a friend, not a ' passion ' for
once but a clever well-read woman, whose brother I fancied
myself in love with. I mention her, because on one or
two other occasions I had the same illusion respecting
near relations of women friends and explain it thus : the
sun I revolved round illumined another body which, in
defiance of such astronomical knowledge as I possessed,
was taken for another fiery globe instead of merely a dead
moon. It is not fair however to speak thus of my young
man as I thought him then, for besides being extraordinarily
good-looking in the style I most admired — fair with blue
eyes — he was anything but a fool, and one of the smartest
officers in a celebrated cavalry regiment.
Whether he did, or did not, deliberately trifle with my
young affections I cannot say, but when one day at a ball
at East Horseley Towers he asked me to come into the
conservatory as he had something to tell me before his
regiment left Aldershot, I had no doubt as to what was
coming, and if he had proposed to me think I should have
accepted him, though the affair would certainly have ended
120 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1875-76
as did the bogus engagement to Willie Wilde. What
happened however was, that he took from his breast-pocket
the likeness of a perfectly lovely girl to whom he said he
was going to propose next week ! . . . This was rather a
shock, but I kept a stiff upper lip and wished him luck. If
I was unhappy about it, all I can say is, it has left no trace
in my memory. He married the girl, had a most miserable
and tragic life with her, and afterwards was supposed to
have shot himself by accident on a big-game expedition,
— but no one really believed it was an accident.
This ghost of a love affair was my last glance back from
the plough, and the fight for freedom was soon to begin
in grim earnest.
CHAPTER XIII
1876 AND 1877
IN spite of these social perturbations, for I won't quite
call them pleasures, music ran her course more or less fit-
fully. One day I went with the Ewings to a Wagner concert,
and was introduced to her brother, Alfred Scott Gatty,
the successful song-writer, who, knowing his brother-in-
law's soaring spirit, entreated me above all things not to
aim high ; ' it's not the slightest use ' he added, and I rather
think he was speaking seriously. Wagner, who was almost
unknown in England, had rashly contracted for a series
of concerts conducted by himself, which I afterwards heard
were a failure financially. My party were all hard up, and
we sat so far away from the platform that all I saw was
an undersized man with a huge head, apparently in a
towering rage from start to finish of the concert ; I thought
he could hardly refrain from whacking heads right and left
instead of merely the desk. No doubt the performance
was insufficiently rehearsed and execrable, anyhow I was
not as much carried away as I expected.
As yet though there had been a great deal of simmer-
ing I was not in open disgrace with my father ; he used
even to do unexpected kind little things. For instance
Aunt Susan had given me prints of some of my favourite
pictures in the National Gallery — Bellini's Doge was one —
and suddenly he told me to get them framed and put
it down to him ; perhaps he wished to rub in that there
are blameless forms of art-devotion. Two things, my love
of riding and a growing interest in politics, threw a frail
bridge of sympathy between us at times, and shortly
before the crisis he presented me with a filly he had bred,
121
122 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1876-77
and let me break her, which amused me and saved him
expense. I schooled her regularly over the home fences,
and as I was allowed to ride out alone — the least trouble-
some form of locomotion for the stable hands — I used to
lark her surreptitiously over neighbours' hedges. There
is a field near Cove, now full of aircraft sheds, where I
once lay in a ditch, the filly on top of me, for quite ten
minutes before I could wriggle myself free.
I did a certain amount of country house visiting. To
be inspected on coming out by the head of my mother's
family, Sir Henry Stracey, was a ceremony that ranked
only second to presentation at Court, and I recollect that
on the way down to Rackheath I got a bit of coal dust
into my eye and arrived with it bunged up. As usual
there was no weak display of pity, only extreme irritation
on my mother's part at such a thing happening ' just when
I wanted you to look your best for Uncle Henry.' The
Straceys of that generation were the most musical family I
ever met in England, and I remember saying naively to my
cousin Diana : ' Why, you're almost as musical as me ! '
Another visit that left an impression was one paid
with my father to his life-long friend Mr. Staniforth of
Windermere, an immensely rich old Quaker of purest breed,
who wore a broad-brimmed beaver hat, had never crossed
the sea, and nevertheless was a tremendous power in the
county. He was greatly entertained at learning that my
luggage consisted of eight hats, no extra boots, and no
nightgown, I having packed for myself ; also at my address-
ing from his house a tremendous letter to the Times about
' English Apathy as regards Wagner/ I had already trans-
lated two or three articles from Schumann's delightful
' Music and Musicians ' for Macmillans Magazine, and
hopes had been held out that further translations would
be favourably considered ; hence I was surprised and dis-
gusted to receive a polite intimation that my letter would
not appear in the columns of the Times.
Of course too there were visits to the married sisters.
While staying with Alice and Harry Davidson in Edinburgh
I wrote the ballad ' Schon Rothraut/ with which I was
soon to sing myself into musical circles at Leipzig — also
i876-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 123
went to balls, and was entranced by what I had never
seen before, reels danced in costume and to perfection.
On the way home I stayed with Mary and Charlie Hunter
in Northumberland, going out hunting on the only animal
that could be raised for me — a huge heavy horse that drew
old Mr. Hunter's coal cart, and was supposed never to
have jumped a fence in its life. On that day it got over
or through a good many — one could hardly call it jumping
— and I enjoyed myself immensely. But all the time the
conviction grew and grew that nothing was any good save
one thing, and that go to Leipzig I must.
Occasionally, though very rarely, I went to a concert
in London, being met at Waterloo and convoyed to St.
James's Hall by some approved friend, or perhaps by Aunt
Susan's maid, and on one occasion was actually presented
to Frau Schumann and her daughters. This great event
was engineered by a friend of mine, Mrs. George Schwabe,
of whom more will be related presently, whose mother-
in-law — another personality who will reappear in these
pages — was an old friend of Frau Schumann's. The extra-
ordinary thing is that in the blaze of impressions I was
to gain in after life of that wonderful woman, all recol-
lections of our first meeting have faded, but I gather from
a remark in one of Mr. Ewing's letters that she gave my
musical aspirations her blessing. She could do no less !
Soon after I struck what may rank as a half -milestone
in my journey ; for the first time I heard Brahms. The
occasion was a Saturday Popular Concert at which the
' Liebeslieder Waltzer ' were sung by four persons, three
of whom (the Germans) knew the composer personally and
afterwards became factors in my life. They were Frauleins
Friedlander and Redeker, Mr. Shakespeare and George
Henschel. That day I saw the whole Brahms ; other
bigger, and, to use the language of pedants, more important
works of his were to kindle fresh fires later on, but his
genius possessed me then and there in a flash. I went
home with a definite resolution in my heart. , . .
That night there was a discussion at dinner as to which
Drawing Room I had better be presented at. Suddenly
124 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1676-77
I announced it was useless to present me at all, since I
intended to go to Leipzig, even if I had to run away from
home, and starve when I got there. . . .
I almost despair of anyone believing to-day, so quickly
has the world moved since then, what such a step stood
for in my father's mind. We knew no artists, and to him
the word simply meant people who are out to break the
ten commandments. It is no exaggeration to say that the
life I proposed to lead seemed to him equivalent to going
on the streets ; hence the strange phrase he hurled at me,
harking back in his fury to the language of Webster's or
Congreve's outraged fathers : * I would sooner see you
under the sod/
After a period of vain efforts to overcome his resistance,
which became so terrific that it was no longer possible to
broach the subject at all, I quite deliberately adopted the
methods used years afterwards in political warfare by other
women, who, having plumbed the depths of masculine
prejudice, came to see this was the only road to victory.
I not only unfurled the red flag, but determined to make
life at home so intolerable that they would have to let me
go for their own sakes. (I say * they/ but here again I
felt that, whatever my mother might say in public, she
was secretly with me.) In those days no decent girls
travelled alone, third class and omnibuses were things
unheard of in our world, and I had no money ; but I would
slip away across the fields to Farnborough Station, travel
third to London, and proceed by omnibus to any concert
I fancied. The money difficulty was met by borrowing
5s. from tradesmen we dealt with on the Green, or the
postman, ' to be put down to the General/ In order to
be close to Joachim and his companions I would stand
for hours in the queue at St. James's Hall, and ah ! the
revelation of hearing Schubert's A Minor quartett ! . . .
All my life his music has been perhaps nearer my heart
than any other — that crystal stream welling and welling
for ever. . . .
From my place I used to watch George Eliot and her
husband sitting together in the stalls like two elderly love-
1876-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 125
birds, and was irritated by Lewes's habit of beating time
on her arm with his pince-nez. There is a well-known
syncopated passage in Beethoven's Quartett, Op. 132, and I
noted with scornful amusement how the eyeglass, after a
moment of hesitation, would begin marking the wrong beat,
again hover uncertainly, and presently resume the right one
with triumphant emphasis as if nothing had happened.
All this George Eliot took as calmly as if she were the
Sphinx, and Lewes an Arab brushing flies off her massive
flanks.
The greatest excitement was one day when with beating
heart I forced my way past Mr. Chappell's Cerberus into
the Artists' Room — a place more sacredly awful to me than
the Holy of Holies can ever have been to young Levite —
and made the acquaintance of Frauleins Friedlander and
Redeker, expressed to them my admiration of their singing,
and fell madly in love with Redeker, whose rendering of
that divine love-song : ' Wie bist du meine Konigin ' had
all but torn the heart out of my body. They were good-
naturedly touched by such enthusiasm and begged me to
come and see them some morning, which I did, cHmbing
up stairs upon stairs to the room they shared. It was at
ii a.m., they were in deshabille, the beds unmade, and
they were sipping port out of an egg-cup. This unaccus-
tomed sight gave me rather a shock, and for a moment I
thought of my father, but supposed it was just part of the
artist life ; and indeed a few months later such a spectacle
would have made no more impression on me than did
Mr. Lewes's eyeglass on George Eliot.
My financial arrangements with the tradesmen came out
of course, as they were meant to, and to my father's ragings
I stubbornly replied : ' You won't let me go to Leipzig so
of course I have to go to London to hear music/ From
this moment he became convinced that, freed from control,
I should squander money right and left, and one of the
stock phrases was : ' We shall have to sell your mother's
diamonds ' — a calamity that ranked in our minds with
expedients such as debasing the coinage. But in this
phrase I thought I saw a weakening of will ; he was actually
considering possible consequences of surrender ! . . .
I26 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1876-77
I had a few friends who backed me up more or less
openly and were consequently looked on with disfavour
at home. To this rule Barbara Hamley, now Lady Ernie,
proved an exception, contriving in a miraculous manner
to be my friend and yet keep on excellent terms with the
parents, who delighted in her. She effected this miracle
by a blend of tact, reasonableness, and sense of humour
that must have oiled many locks in her course through life ;
moreover, but for her sympathy with the Frimhurst rebel,
she was a perfectly normal, model young lady, who kept
house with great success for her adored and adoring uncle
Sir Edward Hamley, then Commandant of the Staff College
(one of whose sympathetic traits was a great admiration
for my mother). Thus she was in a favourable situation
for operations, and her championship of me included a
useful element — full comprehension of my father's point
of view.
Not so that of Mrs. George Schwabe, daughter of Lord
Justice James, a clever, hard riding, whist-playing, par-
ticularly cherished friend of mine, who as radical, and one
justly suspected of unorthodox views on religion, naturally
considered this opposition to my German plans ridiculous
and out of date. So too did Mrs. Napier, wife of her first
cousin General William Napier (the historian's son), who
was then in command — or rather Mrs. Napier was in com-
mand— at Sandhurst. This delightful champion of mine
had rebel blood in her own veins, her father, fierce eagle-
eyed Sir Charles Napier, whom his daughter was as like
as two peas, having eloped with her mother, a Greek. It
goes without saying that these two friends of mine were
constant subjects of strife, and if my mother, jealous by
nature, was specially so in these cases, who can wonder ?
It was all very well for Mrs. Napier to say right and left :
' Of course dear little Ethel must go to Leipzig ' — to say
it even to my parents themselves, which she did, for she
came of a fearless stock. She was not my mother, she had
not to endure daily scenes with my father — scenes which
became more frequent and furious as time went on. For
towards the end I struck altogether, refused to go to Church,
refused to sing at our dinner-parties, refused to go out
1876-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 127
riding, refused to speak to any one, and one day my father's
boot all but penetrated a panel of my locked bedroom
door ! . . .
• • • • • •
There was nothing for it but to capitulate ! Fraulein
Friedlander was able, by some miracle, to produce adequate
testimony to the respectability of her aunt, Frau Professor
Heimbach, who lived at Leipzig, and would certainly be
willing to take me under her wing till her very own mother
had a room at my disposal ; the terms suggested confirmed
Mary Schwabe's reports as to the cheapness of life in
Germany ; my father named the maximum of allowance
he could make me ; it was pronounced to be sufficient,
with care ; and finally, on July 26, 1877, under the charge
of Harry Davidson who knew Germany well, I was packed
off, on trial and in deep disgrace, but too madly happy to
mind about that, to the haven of my seven years' longing.
APPENDIX I
PP. 128 TO 148
PAGE
(a) LETTER FROM MRS. OPIE, MARCH 1848 . . 128
(b) LETTERS FROM S.D., A SCHOOLBOY ADMIRER AGED
THIRTEEN . V . ••• ; , * . . 129
(c) LETTERS FROM MY MOTHER, 1873-1875 . . .132
(d) LETTERS FROM ALEXANDER EWING, ESQ., 1876-
1877 137
w
FROM AMELIA OPIE TO MY GRANDMOTHER, ON THE OCCA-
SION OF MY FATHER'S ENGAGEMENT TO MY MOTHER.
[Note. — / give this letter chiefly because of the tribute to
Bonnemaman ; also because I like to think that Mrs. Opie,
by that time immersed in good works, nevertheless took pleasure
in alluding to her former brilliant career in the world of fashion.]
Castle Meadow : March 12, 1848.
My dear Friend, — Captain Smyth's engagement to the
young lady whose lovely mother I met at General Lafayette's
in Paris some years ago, was an agreeable surprise to me,
and I heartily congratulate you all on so desirable an event.
Obliged as he will be some months hence to return to his
duties in India, I rejoice to learn that the pain he may
feel in leaving those other duties which he so well and
affectionately fulfilled at home will be mitigated by the
consciousness that he carries with him to his distant home
128
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 129
such a charming and accomplished companion as, I am
told, the bride is.
My cough and cold are really better to-day and I hope
to be at the Deanery on the evening of the i5th of this month
and meet thy daughter there.
With kindest regards to thee and thy family,
I am thy sympathizer and sincere friend,
AMELIA OPIE.
FROM S. D. (A SCHOOLBOY ADMIRER, AGED 13).
[Note. — ' 5. D.' was the son of country neighbours of
ours. His great obsession was to be ' gentlemanly ' — an
ambition which somewhat tempers the ardours of his thirteen
years ; nevertheless our relations, though tender, seem to
have lacked the repose characteristic of the type he aimed at.
It will be noticed that the references to Mary grow more and
more insistent, and as No. 8 is the last letter of the series, I
imagine that soon after it was written the usual transfer of
affection took place.]
(i)
My very dearest Ethel, — I beg and beseech you not
to be angry with me for not writing before, but I do assure
you on my word of honour that I have not a bit of time
in this beastly place to write letters, not even to you. I
took your sentence and read it over again several times,
and when I found out what it meant I was very glad.
Hurrah, hurrah, the holidays are soon coming and then
won't we have a lark ? Why I declare it will be as good
as donkey riding to see you skating away as gracefully as
a swallow skims the earth, doing the outside and inside
edge which I hear you do splendidly. I mean to learn
and skate and then perhaps I may have the long looked-for
pleasure and honour of skating with you. I hope you
have quite forgiven me for my ungentlemanly conduct,
but I assure you I did not mean to be hauty and grand,
in fact it never entered into my mind. I have another
thing to ask, if Mary has quite forgiven me for getting
her into such a scrape and not getting her out of it.
With the old usual fond love I remain ever
Your most devoted loving friend for ever,
S.
VOL. I. K
I3o IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED .848-77
(2)
My dearest Ethel, — I must say I was greatly offended,
but however there is an old saying ' all's well that ends
well ' and as you have greatly improved my temper I have
quite forgotten it. Please do not say anything more
about the locket, it was hardly worth giving to you and you
know I hate flattery, but then of course I don't mind it
iromyou. How is that dear darling BEAST R. S. ? I hope
very ill. If you go to see the Mater will you give my
poor old dog a kiss from me, and tell Mary to give Jack's
dog Sailor one. I know Brin will not bite you, because,
like his master, he is very particular. . . .
(3)
. . . Have you been riding that happy donkey again,
and have you been up in the Royal Ethel l again ? Do you
remember our seat at the top ? Oh those happy rides
even on donkeys ! ! Jack has gone back to Harrow. I
forgot to tell you one of the R — girls is in love with him but
of course he does not return it as his views are somewhere
else!!! . . .
I will wear the ring always for your own dear sake. . . .
(4) .v ,'; ... i
... I hope you don't think I was rude that evening
in not paying you any attention ; it was because you were
painting and I thought you would not care to talk. Now
I am going to ask you a serious question, but think it well
over before you reply ; and that is have you forgiven me
enough to ride with me in the holidays, not on donkeys
but on ponies ? Because I am going to ask the Governor
to borrow that pony again for me, as he is better than
nothing and goes splendidly with spurs. Mind you think
before you answer.
In case you should hear of it I daresay you will wonder
why I do not wear the ring, but that is far too precious to
wear at school : why, the fellows would have it off and
break it in a very short time. Was it not odd the other
day when some of the fellows were telling us ghost stories
that one of them should tell the one you told me in that
1 An oak-tree.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 131
dear darling oak tree where I have spent some of the happiest
hours of my life about?
With the fondest love possible, I remain ever my very
dearest Ethel your most loving friend for ever.
S.
P.S. — The scratchings out are only mistakes.
(5)
. . . Now that we are friends again I must tell you
something I was not quite honest about, that is I lost the
ring, but still I thought I would not tell you just then but
wait and see if I would not find it : imagine my delight
and joy when I found it lying on the washing-stand, where
it must have been lying several days, and now it is looking
as pretty as ever on my finger, with the white stone upwards.
I am in such spirits about finding the ring that I have
been jumping about, and have just fallen off my chair :
of course that is not the only reason ; the great reason is
that sweet letter from you. . . .
I am sorry to hear Mary and Neaner have colds : colds
are such horrible things are they not ? . . . I heard Alice
looked charming, but I should think she felt rather nervous
when she was making her bow. I should like to see you at
your first Drawing Room : you would not feel nervous,
would you ? nor would Mary I should think. ... I hope
you saw your name in Sheldrake's paper. I am pleased
to hear he told the truth for once, because of course you
played beautifully as you always do, because you couldn't
help it. ... Remember me kindly to Mary. I dare not
send my love because old Jack would be angry. . . .
(6)
Dearest Ethel, — A million thanks for your charming
note : it seems a year since I saw you last ; not that I
shall ever forget the happiest days I ever spent in my
life, which were at Frimhurst ! oh it was a jolly time was
it not ? I am going with the J's to see a cricket match
between Harrow and Aldershot. I expect we shall get an
awful licking (I mean Harrow) as they have got the weakest
eleven that ever was known ; at least I should think so.
But then you see they make up for it by football, which
they can lick any school Colledge or university at in the
132 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED i848-77
world. . . . We are going to the W's which is about nine
miles off Frimley, and as he has a pony perhaps we shall
be able to have what I have so long wished for, a pony ride
together. . . . It is all humbug about my liking the youngest
Miss J. I only did it to chaff you, only I am afraid I have
offended you. Knowing your SWEET temper I know you
will forgive me because I am awfully sorry about it.
Your loving friend,
S.
(7)
... I am riding such a beautiful cob ; people say he
does his 18 miles in the hour. I thought of you and how
you would enjoy it. I do wish I could come over and see
your darling self, but you see people won't lend their ponies
to do 26 miles, for its 13 from here at least. . . . Please, as
old Jack is not there, give my love to Mary if I may venture
to send it. ...
My dearest Ethel, — I daresay you wondered why I
did not keep my promise in coming to see you, but the
Governor made us come up to London or you may be sure
I should not have missed the pleasure of seeing you. . . .
I went to a Pantomime last night and enjoyed it as much
as I could without you being there. ... I am longing for
the pleasure of seeing you, once more only. I brought
the little squirrel up here with me, he is just as tame as
ever and hops about like a child. . . .
Please write to me if you can spare the time. I must
not ask Mary to write or dear old Jack may not like it. . . .
FROM MY MOTHER
[Note. — These early letters of my Mother's are included
mainly because she was my Mother. Letters were not her
medium, partly owing to a rheumatic thumb which often made
writing a painful effort. Still, given her turn of mind, it
is amazing to find her passing on square roots as a matter of
course, and I think too that the conflict of preoccupations in
the Confirmation letters will appeal to other Mamas.]
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 133
(i)
(Before our Confirmation)
1873-
My darling Ettie, — Your letter interested and pleased
me more than I can express. God bless you, my two
darling girls, and may He make this time the turning
point in your lives. What a charming person Mr. — must
be ! You must tell him I often think of him with a grate-
ful heart for his kind interest in my children.
Your confirmation dresses are in course of progress
and will be, I hope, just what they ought to be. I hope
your old prints still fit. There are two very pretty ones
making for each of you, one pink and the other blue.
We dined at the Burrells on Friday and met besides the
Rectory party that nice little Mrs. Merries and a Captain
and Mrs. Hitchcock from the Staff College. Emily looked
and was charming ; she spoke so nicely and affectionately
of you both. She was in her black and yellow. Her friend
Miss Mortimer looked very pretty, but was wonderfully
dressed, like a jockey, in a pale yellow silk with long sleeves,
a tight blue satin bodice sleeveless, and blue satin skirt, and
blue satin stripes across the yellow sleeves ; a very tight
yellow silk skirt and very bunchy blue satin panier — one
blue and one yellow feather in her hair ! !
We are all going to the Staff College ball on Tuesday
and to the State Ball on Wednesday, for which Alice has
a very pretty new blue Balldress.
You heard what a favorable verdict the doctor gave
about Johnny on Wednesday. They say there is not the
slightest doubt of his recovery and that his health is much
improved ; going to Mr. Fry does him a great deal of good
and makes him exert himself so much more. . . .
And now my darlings goodbye,
Ever your fond Mother,
NINA SMYTH.
(2)
1873-
My darling Child, — I fully intend D. V. being present
with Alice at your Confirmation, and if possible remaining
over Sunday to take the Eucharist with you, as we do
134 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
not start for Germany till Tuesday 3rd. Have you white
gloves ? I will send the shawls, veils, and all complete
with the dresses, and new Jaconet petticoats to wear with
them. The hats and velvet shall be sent with the new
prints. I have some difficulty in matching the grey for
the skirts for the new Spring dresses but shall succeed in
time. Meanwhile you might wear your red one on cold
Sundays and your green petticoats with the grey on bright
Sundays
I will telegraph when we are to arrive.
Ever your fond Mother,
N. SMYTH.
(3)
April 23 ! ! Ethel's Birthday !
Many many happy returns of the day my darling and
may you be stronger in health by your next birthday and
be the dear good girl to us this year that you have been all
last. . . . How tiresome about the cape ! I cannot under-
stand it. Are you sure putting the band a little lower will
not do ? The people have sent you so many things they
must know you are not a little girl, but if it really is too
small send it back with a note giving your height. . . .
The Keatings will lend you a guitar to see how you like
it first and then we can buy one. God bless you my darling
child, and may He watch over you and keep you in the
right path.
Your fond Mother.
P.S. — I highly approve of your trying for the Cambridge
Local Examination.
(4)
Frimhurst : July 1874.
Ettie darling, — It is indeed delightful about dear Alice
and we are all very happy about it — he is such an excellent
dear fellow and so clever and amusing ; he will be a charming
ingredient in our family circle. I will send the box by Papa
who is taking Johnny up to Emma Arkwright's for a week
to be under Hutton — I do so pray he may do him good. . . .
Johnny says he has got your letter this morning : the
square root of 7! is 2*738612 etc. He couldn't quite make
out whether the second number was 1650 or 1*650. The
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 135
square root of the former number is 41*21326 etc., of the
latter 1*284523 etc. I enclose a paper that will shew you
how he did it.
We are all looking forward so much to your coming
home, my darling. ... I do not write more to-day as I
have been quite laid up with rheumatism all down my side,
and cannot go to the FitzRoy's Garden Party to-morrow,
but dear Mrs. Longman will chaperone the girls. God bless
you my child,
Your loving Mother.
(5)
July 1874.
My darling Child, — I am so glad your chest is better ;
I think you had better not give up painting, dear, unless
it makes the pain worse, as it is a sedentary employment
without much exertion of the mind, and therefore a
relaxation. . . .
It appears that when Hutton saw Johnny first he
thought worse of his hip than of anything else, but when
he had examined the spine 6 or 7 times he put his finger
on a particular place and said : ' this is the seat of the
mischief ' and after ordering his back to be fomented for
two hours he returned, and after considerable manipula-
tion all at once Reid and Papa heard a sort of click, and
Hutton said ' there ! it has now gone back to its place ' ;
but then he worked the arm about a good deal which gave
poor Johnny exquisite pain and exhausted him terribly.
He says Johnny must return to him in a month. . . .
Everyone is so hopeful ! When poor F. L. consulted
Hutton he told him he could do nothing for him, and
when he saw Johnny he said he could make a cure of him.
May it please the Almighty in His mercy to restore our
darling to health ! . . .
(6)
Frimhurst.
My darling Ettie, — You see Johnny has taken up your
Exam. Papers and of his own accord said he should like to
help you, which is a very good thing for you both. . . .
We all went yesterday to see some games given by the
Highland Brigade. While the ' tug-of-war ' between the
136 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
Artillery and the 42nd was going on, it was great fun to
see Papa crouching down, leaning on his umbrella, shouting
and encouraging the Artillery who ought to have won,
but one man slipped up and was disabled. . . .
I think the affair between Captain — and Miss —
will certainly come off after all ; / have done my best. . . .
The guitar shall, / promise, be returned to-day. It had
been put up in your room, so being out of sight was, I fear,
out of mind. . . .
(7) ^
Frimhurst : January 1875.
Mon enfant cherie, — Au contraire je suis tres contente
de ta bonne petite lettre, il n'y avait aucune faute de
grammaire, ou d'ortographe, mais de terns en terns une
erreur de tournure de phrase. Mais ceci ne peut s'acquerir
qu'avec une grande habitude de parler ou d'ecrire, et
meme c'est etonnant que tu t'exprimes sibien, ayant si
peu 1'occasion de parler. . . . Mais, ma petite, il faut
absolument que tu reviennes Lundi prochain. Mary
doit s'en aller a Trelyddon, et Alice en a encore pour trois
semaines de sa cuisine a Londres, et nous ne pouvons
rester sans fille du tout a la maison, en ayant 3 ! . . .
Dis mille choses gracieuses et aimables de ma part a Mme.
Bourne, en la remerciant de tout cceur pour toute sa bonte
a ton egard. . . .
[Written after Johnny's death, while on a first visit to
Alice's home. I was staying with Mary and Charlie.']
Muirhouse, Davidson's Mains, Midlothian : Autumn '75.
Ettie darling, — Mind you wrap up well for your trip
here on Monday — put on a long-sleeved jersey as it's very
cold here. Alice says she fears you'll find it dull, but I
don't for a moment, for there's always someone in the
house and they're passionately fond of music and under-
stand about it. Then there are always Jeux d'Esprit going
on, versifying themes, etc. Mr. Davidson is the j oiliest
most cheery old man in the world, reads everything so
well, from Shakespere to a comic song, and they are so
warm and kind and affectionate in their manner, not a
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 137
bit stiff or formal as I thought they would be. As for dear
Harry, all his faults are manner, but he is really very dear
in his own house, so very thoughtful and considerate.
Alice has such an interminable cold that Mr. Davidson,
who just worships her, calls her ' Madame Catarrh/ . . .
I shall leave my ermine muff and collarette behind
here for you. Tell them at Corbridge not to let anyone
come and meet me ; it must be a trouble as I know they
are all busy now, more or less, and I am old and ugly enough
to take care of Bob and myself.
God bless you dear. I wish I could have had a peep
at you.
Love to all who like it.
Your loving Mother.
P.S. — I am rather nervous about my Mary. I hope
she has not been leaping about too much.
FROM ALEXANDER EWING, ESQ., A.S.C.
(Composer of ' Jerusalem the Golden.')
[Note. — Mr. Ewing's letters will hardly interest any but
musicians, except perhaps No. 8 — a vivid description of a
Rubinstein Recital— and the last two letters of farewell from
the master, who had missed his vocation, to the pupil about to
take up her own. No. 9 is the letter which, surreptitiously
read by my father, brought my Harmony instruction to an
abrupt end.}
January 17, 1876.
Dear Miss Smyth, — I am so much obliged to you for
the music which you have sent (and for the most brilliant
of notes!). I think the little Kirchner things are quite
of the right sort.
The large class of our fellow creatures whom you so
aptly depict in two words, what do they do with the above
phrase ? When they hear the D don't they think the
performer has hit a wrong note ? (I knew one of them
once — a so-called ' Great Musician ' too — who described
138 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
Bach's fugues as ' those things that sound as if they were
all wrong '.)
No. 2 is very fresh and bright. I ' nod my head ' at
it as well as them, tho' perhaps for other reasons.
No. 3 would scarce have existed but for Schumann ;
it dreams prettily.
No. 4. Very Schumannesque.
No. 5. A gem, not like anybody else. I think might be
a genuine ' popular ballad ' of some northern race, dark,
true and tender.
No. 6. Most charming. Like (for one thing) a young
dryad dancing alone in a forest glade (I can't help it if this
seems absurd).
No. 7. Very new. It says something several times,
with great distinctness, but as yet I have not gathered
what.
No. 8. I think almost too sketchy except the end ; and
No. 9 seems almost perfect.
I was careful to form all these impressions without
looking again at what you had said, and now I see you do
not always quite agree with them.
' Dodelinette ' is nice and pretty, and the last pages
evidently quite like the clock with the weak heart (or
mainspring) .
I send you volume I of Schumann's ' Gesammelte
Schriften.' I have little doubt you will like it, and if so,
there is another volume, when you want it. You must
pardon its tattered condition, also my most reprehensible
habit of scoring passages which strike me at particular
moments violently with pencil marks, etc.
I also send you one of Liszt's most recent things. What
would those who take such pains to call spades agricultural
implements say to some of his chords and progressions ?
Please picture to yourself the effect of the orchestration as
well as you can, and don't miss where the trumpets and
trombones come crashing and blazing in jf. at the passage—
'The Archangel Michael. . . FLAMES. . . from every window!'
I am,
Very truly yours,
ALEXANDER EWING.
We are very sorry you are not to be at the theatricals.
I hope you admire the way my parcels are sealed.
A clerk did it.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 139
(2)
Aldershot : March 8, 1876.
... I think haste is what you have to guard against
at present. It must be that only which makes you mistake
chords and omit characteristic intervals.
You know (please think of it now, oh Sturm and Drang !)
there is no hurry !
Pardon my preaching and
Believe me (in haste), etc.
:: ,,"•'<; '•'<$ '. r- ,' •••
March n (?), 1876.
... I yesterday went to St. James's Hall to hear
Brahms's Sestett, which some say is his very best work as
yet. It was perfectly divine ; a real Master- work, quite
fit to stand alongside the greatest men's productions.
Schumann was not wrong when, among the last things he
said, before the dark clouds veiled him as he set ' on
earth, he prophesied Brahms's greatness.
You are very good to have got up the Alto clef. I
should like you, as soon as you can, now, to get accustomed
to the Soprano one — and then you will have done (in fact
you have already done) what not every ' great ' amateur
musician has.
You know that expression * a great musician,' and what
(in the mouths of the canaille) it implies ? I like to see
their faces, when, on making acquaintance with one, they
say, by way of being pleasant and polite, * You are a great
musician are you not ? '
\That I certainly am not,' is what I generally imply
in so many words — and it is then that they look funny. . . .
(4)
Aldershot : March 14, 1876.
... As I go on really studying music properly, I feel
it more and more hateful to do anything else. I feel
sure I shall take to it altogether some day. Meanwhile
one must go on ' making wings for flight ' as Goethe says
somewhere ; and then, when they are ready, hey ! for
the upper ether.
140 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
We have a concert on Monday, I think it will be pretty
good. If you please we are going to produce R. Wagner,
no less ! The Wedding Chorus from Lohengrin ! What
think ye of that ? . . .
(5)
(?) 1876.
... I am sending you the programme of yesterday,
that you may look at the motifs of Brahms's Sestett —
though that will give you no idea of the divine manner
in which they are worked up. I am glad to know that one
may write at present ; I did not know it when I wrote
the former sheet — (Twere well, however, to consign the
present page at once to cremation, were it not ?) . . .
You once asked if I could draw. I can't, but you will
find, on page 1160 of the programme book, a sketch of
George Eliot which I did yesterday as she sat in the Concert
Room. It really is like her. Lewes is a very repulsive
creature — and two ladies (with brains) who were with me
shrieked at him worse than I. He ' nodded his empty
head ' (I don't forget your hits !) wherever the music was
lightest and shallowest. During a scherzo, for instance,
it went like a mandarin's in a tea-shop window. I am far
from meaning that it is empty except as regards music,
for I think some of his writing most able — but the head
that noddles at a scherzo must be empty of that. G.
Eliot sits and gazes, as if afar, with a great rough powerful
face. She goes to all these St. J. Hall Concerts, and I
should think, and hope, 'twas a real comfort to her great
soul (for a Lewes cannot be, that I am sure of) and she is
worked harder than any carthorse.1 . . .
What an awful day ! I think Spring is behind this
gale. I long for her !
(6)
(?) 1876.
. . . Not knowing whether you have seen Blackwood
for May, I just transcribe you, as a sister translator, this
specimen of the English tongue written by a Leipzig student
thereof.
1 As we know now, Lewes was, on the contrary, George Eliot's greatest
comfort.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 141
' THE CALMNESS OF CHARLES XII
' The King was in his cabin dictating a letter to his
Secretary. A bomb fell on the house and got through the
roof. The Secretary turned his confounded looks to the
King. " Well," said the King, " what do you have then ?
why let you fall your pen ? "
"/Oh, sire, the bomb// "Well," said the King,
" which reference has that with the letter I dictate in this
moment ? " and he continued dictating with the greatest
coldbloodedness . '
Nothing much more delightful in its line has met my
gaze for long.
(7)
(?) 1876.
... I heard Madame Schumann yesterday play un-
surpassably, Nos. 2, 5, 4 and 8 of her husband's Kreisleriana.
The Concert Room was thronged to the roof, and contained
Royalty in the front row. She is in great form, quite
recovered apparently. It is a thing altogether unparalleled
in its way to hear her play his things. It is quite as if he
were in the midst of us (as doubtless he is). When one
thinks of all their story, and looks at her, surviving still
to interpret him to us, there is a something quite sui generis
about it all.
A pupil of hers whom I know has told me, that she
used, some years since, to ' feel ' it a lot that he was not
more widely known, and consequently worshipped in this
country. The fullness of time has brought it about, and
she has lived to see it, that he is about the best and most
widely beloved of all the writers ; as witness the gathering
of yesterday to do honour to her and to him. . . .
(8)
May 3, 1876.
My dear Miss Smyth, — Here followeth some account
of Rubinstein's first recital.
We had made special arrangements of our classes at
the Academy to admit of our going to this one ; so, when
pianoforte class was over, Franklin Taylor and I started
142 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED i848-77
off together, and I swept him at my usual rapid pace down
Regent Street, being anxious not to lose one of the great
man's notes. (He can't keep up like you !) We were in
time, however ; his stall was not near mine, and we
separated. But I was right in the centre of a constella-
tion of friends (I may term them so — I look on them as a
kind of friend, tho' they know me not ; I owe them all
thanks for many a happiness, and they belong to our
race) la Krebs (only four people intervening between us),
Mr. Manns, with his strange weird face, and his brilliant
eyes, and Sir Julius Benedict. Many a time in the course
of the day I read the same things in their faces that I felt
within me.
Krebs, when in repose, sitting listening to another,
not playing herself, is very much more thoughtful looking
than as we see her at the instrument — a very refined type
of face it seemed, and a nice speaking voice. I heard her
talking to her friend as we came out, in first-rate English.
I believe we should like her.
The great Maestro came on, punctually to his time.
A strange looking being. At first sight he loomed broad
and uncouth. I am glad to find he is much younger than
I expected — I should think he is barely my age, but it's
not easy to say what his age is. His hair is a la Henry
Holmes, but much more so. It is about as wild as
Beethoven's. I suppose it may be brushed sometimes,
but I should think not as often as it might.
General effect at the first glance, something like a Bear
out of the woods. Gave a slight — very slight — bend of
his head, sat down, and commenced instanter a prelude of
Bach's, no music before him, of course, from beginning
to end. This bend of his seemed markedly dedaigneux,
and that I thought right. The last time he was here the
people jeered at him.
He was set down to play a prelude and fugue of Bach's,
but he did play two preludes and fugues (I quite forget
which they were).
I thought to myself, ' Is he going to be a disappoint-
ment ? ' I have heard others play Bach just as well as
he did — Bulow, Krebs, etc. There was a wondrous power
of finger-touch in rapid passages, but that was the only
thing at all remarkable about this.
Scarcely taking breath after them, he commenced a
slow movement of Mozart, with a rondo after it.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 143
Immediately we were in a new world — a world of grace*
fairy lightness, and pure, childlike, innocent beauty.
More men than one, you see, evidently, under this
bear's hide. The most refined woman could not have
been more womanly refined than he was here — and yet
there was a man's power veiled behind it. La Krebs and
I were both fetched by this performance, and, as by one
consent, led off a burst of applause of it. Still he scarce
took any notice, but launched out almost without a breath
into Beethoven's great Sonata Appasionata — Op. 57.
The scene changed now, with a vengeance. There came
tremendous rushes and bursts, given with a swaying power,
a marvellous clearness, a rapid surging and seething and
subsiding, which absolutely electrified the crowd of listeners.
(Manns glowed over these orchestral effects — as well he
might.) The slow movement glided its way like a gentle
river, every shade of it rendered with the most loving
observance, and the most poetic feeling. Then came the
most stormy finale. Towards the close of this, he was
simply like some inspired thing, struggling (and visibly,
with every muscle of his body) as with a contending demon,
till at the close, with a mighty grasp and shove, he bound
him down and held him, subservient to his will.
This rather fanciful language does, I assure you, convey
quite what it was like to me.
There was a break in the programme here ; he rose
up to go out. The people fairly shouted at him in a way
I have never heard an audience shout in England. Now
for the first time he made a low obeisance. They called
him on three times ; he came lumbering on each time,
and bowed again, his tangled mane falling over his face,
and he taking hold of it awkwardly with one hand to put
it away.
And now we all breathed for a while.
Next came Schumann's Kreisleriana — the whole of
them. I heard (you know) her play some of them. She
played them best, I think ; but he has one advantage
over her — a Cantabile which surely nobody else ever
approached, and which must be heard to be understood,
such is its power, its variety, and its perfection.
The same three calls on, after these.
Chopin's Sonata (the one with the Funeral March) came
next. We read, in that Leipzig notice, how great his
playing of Chopin is. It was the best thing of all. Totally
144 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
different to everything else. The Funeral March — I have
known it (or thought so) from childhood. Well, I tell
you, (I won't tell anybody else, except perhaps my wife)
I cried at it like a child ! There ! I felt that tears must
come — I tried to keep them back, but back they would
not be kept — they rolled down my cheeks. I can't tell
you exactly what made them come. He played it with
the most utter simplicity — and yet with such a hidden
sort of depth. I think it was more the gradual crescendo
than anything else which went so to one's heart. It was
such utter perfection of gradualness. The thing seemed
to come on and on, and grow and swell, in its simple depth
of sadness.
And it went away in the same manner. The passage
which was fff when it first spoke, was, at the end, though
still ff with reference to the rest, still soft and distant
now ; the long mournful cortege had, you see, passed on,
and was lost in the distance. Nobody could move to
applaud it. After the last echoes of it ceased to be
distinguishable, he burst into the finale.
Three times called on after this Sonata. Then 4 Etudes
of Chopin's, one of them the one I called ' Woe ' to you.
He read it on the same principle I do. They were as
marvellous as all the rest. The pace at which he took
some of them was almost incredible. But as for ' missing
notes ! ' . . . Bah !
He finished with several charming things of his own,
but I think we were all too used up with emotion to enjoy
them as we might had not so much gone before. I doubt
not they will come back to us. The last, a Valse Caprice,
was marvellous. He thundered in it, and showered the
lightest fairy pearls, and sang, and played tricksy games —
and, called on 3 times as usual, made his lumbering bows,
and awkwardly moved back his mane with one of his
hands, and disappeared.
His face is the strangest compound of beauty and
ugliness, the masculine, and the feminine. In the profile,
the beauty predominates — the refinement of the profile
is striking. The reverse is the case with the front face.
The playing is something the same — marvellous, nay,
gigantic ; masculine power and energy, and the utmost
delicacy of feminine refinement — both in every grade of
intensity. Add to this, touches of every description in a
degree of perfection which I can't conceive surpassed.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 145
Heigho ! I have given you a ' notice ' with a vengeance.
I have to be up at 7 to-morrow to go to town to Prout,
and must now see about some sleep. I hope I shall hear
from you soon ; probably I shall to-morrow.
I am ever most truly yours.
P.S. — I have no doubt we shall find people to say he
' thumps ' too much and that sort of thing. Some of his
gestures occasionally verge on the ludicrous.
(9)
June 1876.
... It does strike one with amazement when one sees
the enormous masses of people whose lines go not beyond
housekeeping and petty scandal. I suppose they are of
such a different race to the likes of us, that they find an
equal difficulty in comprehending how we can get on without
their pursuits.
The Queen has been here to-day, but, not being obliged
to appear, I went not near Her Gracious Majesty.
In moments or hours of — well — despondency, which
will come upon one now and then (this is a continuation
of the previous paragraph) one sometimes thinks what an
uphill struggle it is for our race. These other people go
calmly sloping along through their narrow restricted orbits ;
their joys and their sorrows are feeble and dim. This we
know, (though they do not) because ours flash and blaze,
and then sink down into the very bulb of the thermometer.
We don't know much Rest. Not that we really want to,
for Action is the Bliss of the Spirit, but the Body cries out
for it at times. I suppose that is, of course, why so many
of us die so young.
And are they, who go so soon, to be called happy —
glorious beings, for instance, like Mozart, Mendelssohn,
Chopin, Schumann — gone away into ' das Stille Land '
as Uhland names it, just, one would think, when this
world lay at their feet in all its loveliness ? For, to us,
with all its drawbacks, it is a lovely world and life. What
race finds so much delight in it as ours ? The other tribes
do not know what it is to us. They rest, and they house-
keep, and make money, and have, of course, their lesser
griefs and gladnesses, and stare at us, and deem us more
or less mad, tho', very often, not a bad sort of folk in
our way. Because we treat them much more kindly and
VOL. I. L
146 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
considerately than they treat us. They torture and hamper
us, and jar our souls, without knowing what they are
about ; but we spare them, and serve them, and do our
best for them, and only wish to be away from them and
among ourselves. But I would we knew ' whither we are
wending ' (to quote the familiar church song).
That the world into which we are wending is not a
' Stille Land ' I am convinced — but oh, that one knew !
If it be not a land of action and of bliss for the Spirit, then,
for goodness sake, let us eat, drink and be merry in this,
which we know something about. But all those glorious
intelligences which we know (in a degree) as we do our-
selves, never can merely ' go out ' as Leibgeber calls it.
You think, do you not, that of all the Arts ours is the
most like a clear proof of this ? The musician's creations
live after his death in a peculiar manner which no other
artist's do. A picture rots, a statue crumbles to dust.
A work of Bach's is just as much alive as a work of
Wagner's ; and no more, nor less alive now than when he
was alive himself. It exists for us on paper, and in perform-
ance ; two kinds of existence, differing in degree perhaps,
but the one quite as real as the other. At all times the
essence of it is the Spirit. An orchestra of equal excellence,
which should render a symphony of, say, Herz (if there
were such a thing) and one of Beethoven — what would be
the essence of the difference between the two works ?
Not the material part.
(Oh dear ! what truisms I am putting down.)
Then are the works to possess this spiritual existence,
and not the spirit which produced them ? . . . They may ;
one can't tell. But one can't believe it. . . .
(10)
Manchester : April 20, 1877.
I feel disposed to begin with a Jean Paulisches Vorwort 1
on the beginnings of letters, in certain cases. I will not
call you ' My dear Miss Smyth.' I have tried it lately,
but I shall not to-day. It is too like the lady in Dickens
who always said * Doyce & Clennam, I am sure more
proper.' You and I are, at all events, brother and sister
artists. The thing that it is most natural to me to call
you is ' my child,' And as many other people do so I mean
1 Preface.
1848-77 THE SMYTH FAMILY ROBINSON 147
to do it too. One thing is, I know you don't mind what I call
you, and that after all it makes no earthly difference.
End of the Vorwort or Extra Leaflet. Well then, my
dear child, to take the end of your letter first, which is
full of the strongest things you could say to me.
' Gratitude ' is surely a misplaced word. We helped one
another in the old times, and laboured side by side. They
were happy times. I think no pleasure is so pure and
great as working at something one loves with a person who
is utterly sympathetic. Well, we had that enjoyment
together for a good spell. Your mother did for it,
effectually. If I spoke out my mind I should say with
St. Paul (so that the most orthodox could find no logical
objection) ' the Lord reward her according to her work/
But yet I shall not copy St. Paul herein, for I suppose she
meant well. At all events since I, so to speak, lost you,
my music has languished and withered, and at the present
hour is dead within me. I find it too great a grind to
work at it alone. It won't come. During latter months
at Aldershot, all I did, except indeed reading Wagner,
was perfunctory, teaching sort of work — in harness to
turn mills for other people. Now even that is over.
But while I have been going downhill gradually into
these deep places, you have been going along your upward
path, making friends with some of the great and noble in
the world of Art. You have got Madame Schumann's
blessing, and you will prosper and flourish. I have often
said I should yet be proud of my first harmony ' pupil '
(though that is an improper term) and so I shall. Well —
had I had some 20 years off my back, I might have come
along the path after, or with you. But those years will
not be shaken off.
I do not yet know Brahms well enough to think so
much of him as you do. I do not always get within his
meaning. I know both Sestetts. I heard his last quartett —
I think in B|? major. I like it very much, and I liked the
(so-called) ' Scherzo ' best. It is no more a Scherzo than
it is an Irish Jig, but it is a superb movement. The critics
considered it unintelligibile ! I heard Madame Schumann
& Co. play her husband's pianoforte quartett just as you
say they did.
As you say, we shall probably meet some day. ' Les
montagnes finissent toujours par se rencontrer,' as says
Cherbulliez. (Do you know him ?) I doubt if we shall
148 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1848-77
over the Wagner Concerts. I only can go to one and
that the first. I trust you will manage to let me know
any great events — such as your going to Dresden (?) and
the like. Nobody can be much more interested in what
happens to you. Though I am in the lows now, don't
suppose I shan't manage to make head against them. I am
depayse, and solitary — always hate new places and new
people. Indeed this place and people seem rather repulsive
to me at first, but no doubt they will improve. The wrench
from Aldershot has been an awful one. . . .
I, too, have a good many friends of sorts, some new and
some old. But one thing is certain ; there is not one,
nor can I suppose there ever will be, who can ever oust
you from your place. It would have to be a second you
to do so, and a second you does not exist. Now, my dear
child, I must bid you good-bye, for the time. Au revoir
I hope and believe it only is. We won't forget each other,
nor all the brave old times when we laboured together.
Believe me, then, always to be most truly yours,
ALEXANDER EWING.
[On hearing I was really going to Leipzig,]
May 1877.
My dear Child and Friend, — I am so glad ! This is
really a great blessing — and coming so much sooner, too,
than we could have expected. How happy you must be,
and how good it was of you to write oft at once and let
me know. Because, after all, nobody can rejoice at it
more than I do. Ah ! were I but coming too ! . . . but
you will tell me all about it, and I shall always apply to
you for the latest information and tips. . . .
. . . Ebben ; for the present I can no more — time
presses and I want to catch you as early as possible with
the heartfelt congratulations which you know will come
from me. Between this and your departure we must
meet and bid good-bye otherwise than in written words.
The address I have given here — (don't lose it now !) is my
office and will always find me. Any time, or where, you
think we can meet, I will come. Auf Widersehn.
Most truly yours,
A. E.
PART II
GERMANY AND TWO WINTERS IN ITALY
CHAPTER XIV
SUMMER 1877
BEFORE embarking on the story of that happiest epoch
of an artist's life, the spell of hard, hope-ridden work which
lies between self-dedication and the endeavour to capture
the interest of an indifferent world, it should be pointed
out that the scene of that golden time was nothing less
than a lingering bit of the dear old Germany of Heine and
Goethe, doomed presently to vanish under the stress of
Imperialism.
In those days there was a feud between Saxony and
Prussia ; Hanover considered herself an aristocratic break-
water against floods of vulgarity setting in from other
states, and Bavaria hated them all impartially. This
condition of things preserved exactly what Empire tends
to destroy, an individual, dignified, self-sufficing life in
each state. As Goethe has said, talent can only thrive in
peace and retirement, and in the days when little German
Courts and middle-sized provincial towns were contentedly
working out their own salvation, you got hundreds of quiet,
beautiful gardens of art. These Empire sweeps away ;
competition with other countries ends in the industrialisa-
tion of everything, including music, and when, more than
a quarter of a century later, I re-visited Leipzig, I found
that was exactly what had happened ; there, as elsewhere,
a flashy chapter was being enacted that made one think
with sadness and longing of past days.
Whether the war, which has brought so many chapters
to an abrupt end, will restore dignity to Art remains to be
seen, but in any case the old setting is lost for ever. For
this reason and not only because I loved it so dearly, it
152 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877
seems worth while recording my impressions of a by-gone
epoch as minutely as I propose to do.
Of the journey I remember little, except that soon
after crossing the Dutch frontier the train made straight
for a distant range of mountains, and suddenly there was
an opening in the chain, through which we passed with the
river that had cloven it. This spot, one of the great gates
into Germany, and which is like the Guildford gap in the
Hog's Back on a huge scale, I have often seen again and
never without a thrill. And then came a still more poignant
moment, the slowing down through hideous suburbs, and
the indescribable emotion with which I read the word
' Leipzig ' on the platform board. We had breakfast at
the little old Hotel de Rom hard by, and sallied forth
to find Frau Professor Heimbach's dwelling, the romantic
name of which was Place de Repos, Treppe G.
Reposeful it certainly was, being a large block of a
building well off the road, jammed in between two other
equally hideous blocks ; romantic no one could call it,
but what of that ? Between me and it hung a veil woven
of youth and hope — the strongest web of romance ; and
as we stepped under a dingy archway into a courtyard
leading to ' Treppe G/ I was passing through the Gate
named Beautiful into the Chosen City. We clambered up
three pairs of rotten wooden stairs, my brother-in-law
curiously sniffing the odours that lingered about them—
odours which I really believe are the monopoly of the two
or three sluggish streams Leipzig is built on, one of which,
the Pleisse at its worst, crawled by close to our house.
A stout, shy, motherly person, clad in what I afterwards
knew was her best gown, greeted us very pleasantly, and
informed us (or rather Harry Davidson, for her Leipzig
accent utterly defeated the little German I had) that I
should not be cut off from England, in that she harboured
another lodger — a ' charmanter Junge/ Mr. B., nephew of
a well-known potentate connected with Punch and a
protege of Frau Schumann's.
We deposited my luggage, inspected my room and the
short wooden bedstead with a mountainous feather bed
i877 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 153
on it, and started off to view the town, which Harry had
known in the past.
Even then it was full of charm ; the walls and fortifica-
tions were gone, all except the Pleissenburg which, placed
in an angle, pulled the whole inner circle of the old town
together, and though really unbeautiful in itself, managed,
with its squat tower and sturdy bulk, to look imposing.
The ' ditch/ as the Germans call it, had been filled in and
planted as a Promenade ages ago, and above it, on our
side at least — for we were just without the Altstadt — the
tall, narrow, tile-roofed houses of Diirer's pictures towered
in a curve above the rise they were built on, and beautifully
caught the evening light. Close to us, on the fringe of
the old town, was the Thomas Kirche, where Bach played
the organ, and the Thomas Schule, of which he was Cantor ;
this is the only dwelling place of the Great Dead that ever
moved me, hideous though it was. They have pulled
down the Pleissenburg and the picturesque old mill beyond
it, but I trust the Rathhaus is still standing. Not very
superb late Renaissance, it is nevertheless a fascinating
building, with its copper-clad pinnacles greened by verdigris,
and the warm, sombre colour of the brick. In my time there
were periodical agitations to clear it away, as also to widen
three or four narrow streets close by, in which were still
some fine old houses, but the Philistines were always over-
borne.
We lunched at the best restaurant in the town, Harry
remarking it would reassure my father to hear what we
had eaten for about lod. each, and then walked out into the
Rosenthal, a sort of park and wood combined — quite pretty
in a stiff style, but reputed to smell of garlic in the spring
to a degree that disconcerted even the most ardent lovers.
Here I made my first amazed acquaintance with the well-
known signboards ' Verboten ' on which the German Empire
is run, and which met us at every turn ; I had thought
grass was meant to walk on, but evidently this was a
mistake.
A peculiarity of Leipzig was, that the space between
the vanished walls and the promenade was carved up into
miniscule gardens about the size of a largish chapel in
154 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877
Westminster Abbey, which were let to anyone who chose
to apply. We had a rendezvous at 4 o'clock to drink
afternoon coffee with Frau Professor in her garden, the
approximate spot being described beforehand, and a promise
given that Mr. B., whom we had not yet seen, would be
on the look-out for us. A very untidy youth of the artistic
type, with a shock of fair hair hanging into his eyes, whose
appearance would have disgusted my father, duly met us
and conducted us to our garden, where Frau Professor and
her niece Fraulein Friedlander had everything in readi-
ness. In each of the gardens were a tiny summer-house
and three or four trees ; ours boasted no flowers, but, to
our amazement, imbedded crazily in the shingle, were five
croquet hoops ; and here after coffee did we start the most
fantastic game of croquet I ever played, Fraulein Fried-
lander and Harry against B. and me. If you could not
get through your hoop because of a tree, you simply shifted
the hoop, manipulating the angle a little to your advantage.
B. was a player of the violent type whose great object was
to cannon off the trees, as if by accident, right into the
summer-house where Frau Professor and her cat were en-
sconced with their knitting. I say ' their ' knitting, because
we were told if the needles stopped one moment the cat
became restless and wandered off into neighbouring gardens.
When the balls began flying about, Frau Professor calmly
piled up the crockery for safety behind the summer-house,
and resumed her place, well tucking up her feet on the bars
of another chair ; and I said to myself, an old lady with
such sound nerves must surely be easy to live with.
After that there was a gala supper in our flat ;
I remember we had partridges stuffed with sauerkraut,
which were pressed on us as being ' fein und begannt.'
This phrase I meditated for a year or so, and eventually
found out ' begannt ' was the Saxon for ' pikant.' My
brother-in-law, fortunately a smoker, was finally conducted
downstairs by B., aided by the light of his own matches,
leaving me to my first night under a German roof. Next
day I saw him off from the station, and began life in a state
of wild enthusiasm that transformed the little round rolls
into manna, the thin coffee dear to Leipzigers into nectar,
i877 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 155
and even invested the sanitary arrangements with a sort
of local-colour appropriateness. The only water the Town
Council supplied in Place de Repos was a thin trickle from
a tap in the kitchen, but as I was equal to cold tubs in those
days this was of no consequence.
My diagnosis of my landlady's character proved correct ;
an easier, more philosophic temperament would be hard to
find, and with B. to interpret, the accent difficulty was
soon got over. But it was not till later days that one wrong
impression was put right. When Fraulein Friedlander
had spoken of her aunt, widow of Professor Heimbach, we
imagined the title implied high university honours, as in
cases like Darwin and Huxley ; face to face with the lady,
one could only suppose her eminent husband had risen
from the ranks and married in earliest youth. Later I
discovered that he was wholly unknown to fame, and indeed
I was never able to learn which University had conferred
his title on the late Herr Professor Heimbach.
Young B. turned out to be a harum-scarum, harmless
sort of youth, whose parents had evidently dispensed
with his presence during the summer holidays, for, as I
now learned, the Long Vacation was in full swing. In
my zeal to leave England I had omitted to make enquiries
as to when the Conservatorium term began, and the place
would be shut for a month yet ; so as Fraulein Friedlander,
her mother, and Fraulein Redeker of the Liebeslieder
Walzer — also a Leipzig young lady — were to spend a
fortnight in the Thuringer Forest, it was suggested I should
accompany them. Fraulein Redeker, as I said before, was
one of my ' passions/ and when informed that Henschel
was to join the party later, I had some notion of the
unutterable happiness that was in store for me.
But only a vague notion, for what that first sojourn
with real musicians in a little wooden house on the verge
of the forest turned out to be, what words can tell ? Let
it be remembered that never in my life had I met anyone
capable of judging whether or not I was the born musician
Mr. Ewing proclaimed me, and after all he himself was
but a gifted amateur. Here I found my compositions
listened to by a man who himself was a composer, who as
156 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877
regards musical equipment was on a level with Brahms
or anyone else in the great music world, and on his and
other faces I read the desired verdict. But the chief
bliss was less personal than that. Henschel is one of the
superbly cultivated musical temperaments you find only
in Germany and Austria ; I have listened to many at
work, but have never heard anything to compare with
his singing — to his own accompaniment of course — of
Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven — in fact any and every
composer. He would sit down at the rickety old piano
in our lodgings, and all the things in musical literature
I had ever wanted to hear, not to speak of others I had
never even heard of (including his own ' first fine careless
rapture ' ' Trompeter Lieder'), were poured out before me.
As some people rejoice in having seen Venice for the first
time by moonlight, so I am thankful the ' Gruppe aus
Tartarus ' was first made known to me by Henschel, and
in my eyes this dear old friend, whom in after years even
my father came to be fond of, was like a god.
We used to take long walks, making for one of the
Beerhouses dotted about the forest, which superior people
laugh at, but which I delight in, on our way singing
Volkslieder in parts, the nearest thing to the improvisa-
tions of Slav Gipsy Orchestras I ever took part in. One
day we got lost ; it was stiflingly hot, the woods smelt
like a great bath of pine-extract, and we felt we should
die if we did not soon find our Beerhouse. Suddenly we
came on it round a corner, and to my last hour I shall
remember the first glass of beer drunk that day ! Henschel
had just been somewhere with Brahms ; and after telling
us the great man's new symphony was to be produced
at the Gewandhaus Concerts, conducted by the composer,
in the coming season, I remember his presently pointing
to me and saying laughingly to the others : ' Look at that
face ! ' . . . Thrice in my life for a brief space I have
been in Heaven, and the first time was in Thuringia.
One souvenir of that radiant fortnight remains with
me. I always called Redeker ' die Konigin/ because, as
I think I mentioned, it was from her lips I first heard
i877
IN GERMANY AND ITALY
157
Wie bist du meine Konigin ' ; so I cut out a cardboard
crown, of the spiky Neptune kind, and induced her to be
photographed sitting on a chair, I myself standing behind
it in the act of crowning her. She afterwards married a
well-known London physician, and as Lady Semon still
possesses this treasure.
CHAPTER XV
AUTUMN 1877
WHILE in Thuringia I had found out, to my horror, from
two lodgers of Frau Friedlander's who were of the party,
that in that house the piano was going all day, and that
composing would have to be done, if at all, at night. I
was in despair, but eventually a peaceful reshuffling of
pensionnaire livestock took place between the sisters-
in-law, and when we returned to Leipzig I settled down
with Frau Professor for good and all. Somehow or other
the fact that the only other lodger was a young man must
have escaped the lynx-eyes at Frimhurst, for I cannot
remember any fuss being made about it.
There was yet a week or so of idleness before the
beginning of the term. I had been given a letter of intro-
duction to one Leipzig big-wig, head of the great publishing
firm Brockhaus, but had no idea of mortgaging my freedom
yet awhile, so merely explored the town, enquired into
prices, found out what music it was possible to hear in
the slack season, and generally looked about me. My
first discovery was that the place was full of French names
like Place de Repos — relics of the Napoleonic era which a
monarch with more historical sense and less Kultur than
his grandson had not thought it necessary to germanise.
If our old block still exists, which is not likely, no doubt
it is now called ' Ruheplatz.' There were many other
links with the French past, and I came to know an old
lady, last survivor of one of the great burgher families,
who stood with me in the window whence she had watched
Napoleon ride out of the gates to the battle of Leipzig.
She told me he looked ' cross and insignificant ' !
One day I saw that Hoffmann's Serenade in D, a piece
158
i877 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 159
of music I particularly wanted to hear, was to be played
next evening at an open-air concert in the Rosenthal
Restaurant, and announced that I meant to be present.
Frau Professor said this was impossible, that no young
girl could go to a place like that by herself, and she un-
fortunately could not take me as next day was ' Grosse
Wasche.' This was the great washing festival held once
a month in households such as ours, and which, judging
by an unsavoury mountain of dirty linen in a certain
cupboard, was overdue. The idea of going with B. was
ruled out of the question, so I hit upon a plan which this
capital old lady somewhat reluctantly fell in with. I hired
grey corkscrew curls and a large pair of horn spectacles,
borrowed her thickest veil and her gown, which, after I had
swathed myself in newspapers tightly tied on with string,
and added other contrivances, was a perfect fit. Having
finally painted in appropriate wrinkles, I sallied forth to
the Rosenthal, sat down with a piece of knitting (for show
only) at a small table, and asked for beer and a ' Schinken
Brodchen ' — that is buttered roll with ham in the middle.
It was a warm September night and the garden was
full of burgher families, seated like me at little tables with
beer and ham, and listening religiously to the really excellent
music — in short it was the Germany of my dreams. The
only illumination was Chinese lanterns, but even by day-
light, I, my stoop, and my hobble would probably have
passed muster. I looked about and saw B. sitting with
two stout German youths, and presently I went up and
asked him some question in a quavering old voice, explaining
that I knew no German. The Serenade, a charming piece
of music by the by, and everything else I heard that night,
enchanted me, and by n o'clock I was unlocking our
house-door, and picking my way by the light of the usual
match, among horrible islands of assorted ' Wasche/ to
my room. Frau Professor was so well broken to English
eccentricity, and so convinced that sons and daughters
of our race can look after themselves, that she never even
sat up for me — a fact which raised her immensely in my
estimation. I had heard from B., whose room was next
hers, that she snored more powerfully than ten strong
160 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877
men, owing, he thought, to the shape of her nose, which
was snub and flat, like a small funnel driven inwards by
a blow from a hammer. As I passed her door I observed
that for once he had spoken the truth, being otherwise
one of the harmless, improbable liars young men of his
type often are.
Next day at lunch I suddenly repeated my question
of the night before in the same quavering voice, and for a
moment B. looked as if he were going mad, but he promised
to keep the secret. When I became a Conservatorist I
found I was already famous, this young man, who was
always cadging for invitations, having supped out on that
story ever since. But it never got to Frimhurst, which
was the main point.
A few days before she left for London, Fraulein
Friedlander took me to pay an eagerly awaited visit, for
this was to be my introduction to the Leipzig music world.
Again a climb up three pairs of rotten stairs, in one of the
hideous buildings which flanked Place de Repos ; and an
hour later, sitting at tea — real tea — with my new friends,
Herr Concert-Meister Rontgen, leader of the Gewandhaus
orchestra, and his family, I had found an answer to the
question, ' What went ye out for to seek ? ' In those walls
was the concentrated essence of old German musical life,
and without a moment's hesitation the whole dear family
took me to their bosom.
It all began with a little sonata I had written, a certain
Bb in which proved to be the key to their hearts. He was
Dutch by extraction, distant cousin of the X-ray discoverer
— as great a gentleman and as true a musician as I have
known. She was of the old Leipzig musical stock Klengel,
a family that could raise a piano quintett among them-
selves, and together with their Rontgen cousins a small
orchestra. Every violin sonata, every piano trio or
quartett printed, would Frau Rontgen or her daughter
tackle — the mother's performance unplaned perhaps, but
of a fire and musicality that carried all before it. Their
one servant was seldom a cooking genius and always needed
supervision, and between two movements of a trio Frau
i877 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 161
Rontgen would cry : ' Line, thou canst take the Scherzo/
and fly off to the kitchen, Line replacing her on the music
stool till eagerly swept off it again. I remember one
occasion when dear old Papa Rontgen, as we used privately
to call him, who had a delicate digestion, complained of
the Egg-Dish (I do not know how else to translate that
basis of German existence ' die Eier-Speise '), and his wife
said with simple contrition, ' Yes, I know, it is my fault,
I ought to have waited to see her brown it ... but thou
knowest how I love that Andante ! '
Their son Julius, composer, viola-player, pianist and all
the rest of it, is, I think, still head of a Music Academy and
conductor at Amsterdam, but Line took to marriage and
babies and rather dropped her music. To see Julius and
his mother playing pianoforte duetts was a sight that
would nearly overwhelm strangers, the motions of their
spirits being reproduced by their bodies in dramatic and
absolutely identical gesture. This is what made the
spectacle so curious ; you could not believe but that some
unseen power was manipulating a duplicate set of invisible
wires. At the tender parts of the music they would smile
the same ecstatic smile to themselves, or in extreme cases
at each other ; in stately passages their backs would become
rigid, their elbows move slightly away from their sides,
and their necks stiffen ; at passionate moments they would
hurl themselves backwards and forwards on their chairs
(never sideways, for they respected each other's field of
action) and the fervour or ferocity of their countenances
was something I have only once seen equalled — by Sada
Yacco's rejected admirer on the Japanese stage. It was
all so natural and sincere, that though one could not help
smiling sometimes, it never interfered with your enjoyment,
once you knew them well enough.
If any surviving members of that dear family should
ever read these lines, I cannot think, knowing my devotion
to their mother and how I reverenced her, that they will
resent my poking a little harmless fun at her and Julius.
It was merely an excrescence on the very thing I am
extolling — the intimate, you may really say domestic,
quality of music-making|in those days.
VOL. I. M
162 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877
Johanna, the eldest daughter, a particular friend of
mine, was a character, and one of the most musical of
people, though she played no instrument — already a sign
of originality in that family. She was one of the few critics
I listened to with respect, and had a phenomenally fine
ear. Once I made her sit down sharply on the keyboard
and tell me what notes were sounding ; she began with the
lower and upper ones, a trifle of course to such as her, but
with the rest she was equally successful, as far as her bulk
would let me check them. She would say, beginning from
the bass : ' d, d# — no e — f, fj — then nothing till b%,' and so
on, till the echoes died into silence. Let any musician,
choosing a slim collaborator if possible, try this and see
how difficult it is. Johanna had little or no voice, and
what there was of it was poor in quality, but no sheep
dog ever kept his flock in better order than she the altos
in choral singing.
She was religious and of a Lutheran turn of mind
altogether — a slightly different thing to the Nonconformist
conscience but of the same family — in spite of which,
rinding out that she did not know Maupassant, I rashly
lent her a carefully selected volume of his stories. But
next day she gave it back with a wonderful snort of which
she had the secret, conveying remonstrance with me, pride
in her own incorruptibility, and confidence in Germany's
power to finally crush creatures like Maupassant. In
moments of excitement she spoke almost as broad Saxon
as Frau Professor herself, and I cannot refrain, for the
benefit of those who know the dialect, from giving her
immortal words on that occasion : ' Ne, ich danke dir, so
'nen Dreck les' ich nich ! da geniegt mer schon mei Shakes-
pere und mei Geede ! ' (' No, I thank thee, such filth will I
not read. My Shakespere and my Goethe suffice unto
me/) Later I was to find out that this is the usual opinion
in Germany of modern French literature, though seldom
so forcibly expressed.
There was one more belonging to that household, a
dear Swedish girl called Amanda Meyer, violinist and com-
poser, who afterwards married Julius ; and then for the
first time I saw a charming blend of art and courtship very
i877 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 163
common in those days. Thus it must have been in Bach's
time, thus with the old Rontgens, but I don't see how it can
come off quite in the same way under modern conditions.
Thinking of differences between then and now, what
most strikes me is the fact, that very often of an evening
these families would combine to make music among them-
selves. Not only that, but on every other Sunday members
of the quartett Papa Rontgen led, the 'cellist of which
was his nephew Julius Klengel, would come to his flat and
play all afternoon. Sometimes of course they rehearsed
one of their repertory numbers, but these meetings were
mainly for the pleasure of making music. Then there was
leisure in the world to love and practise art for its own
sake, and that, that, is the tender grace of those dead
days ! . . .
Shortly before the war Kreisler told me a horrible
thing ; he said ' I have visited every town in the world,
almost, of over 100,000 inhabitants, and of them all I know
only the railway station, the hotel, and the concert hall/
I exclaimed it was a hideous, degrading life ; why did he
go on with it ? He spoke of relations to support, financial
crises, and so on ; and when I uttered the German equivalent
of ' bosh ! ' he replied : ' Yes, you are right ; one gets into
the groove and can't or won't get out of it.' . . . This is
the sort of madness of which I wish the war would purge
the world.
CHAPTER XVI
WINTER 1877-1878
AT the time I signed on as pupil of the Conservatorium,
that institution was merely trading on its Mendelssohnian
reputation, though of course we in England did not know
that. The first person the neophyte would come into con-
tact with was a horrible old doorkeeper, Castellan A., relic
of the Golden Age, who refused to do even the smallest of
his duties, such as deliver a letter, without a tip. Life
was then on a scale that made a halfpenny a matter of long
disputes between Frau Professor and her tradesmen, hence
one penny was considered by our tyrant a satisfactory
gratuity, but I never grudged a penny more bitterly. The
real fountain of the universal slackness was of course the
then Director, an old friend (?) of Mendelssohn's, who had
reached the age when, in some natures, thoughts of duty
cease from troubling, scruples are at rest, and nothing but
emoluments and pleasures — and his pleasures were not well
spoken of — are taken seriously.
The three masters I had to do with were Reinecke,
conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts, for composition ;
Jadassohn, a well-known writer of canons, for counterpoint
and theory generally ; and Maas for piano. The lessons
with Reinecke were rather a farce ; he was one of those
composers who turn out music by the yard without effort
or inspiration, the only emotion connected with them being
the ever-boiling fury of his third wife — a tall, thin woman
with a mop of frizzy black hair — at the world's preferring
Brahms's music to that of her adored husband. There were
always crowds of children prowling about the corridor of
his flat, and he was unable to conceal his polite indifference
164
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 165
to our masterpieces, taking up his pen to resume his own
before we had got to the door. Jadassohn's classes, held
in the Conservatorium, were at least amusing, but equally
farcical as instruction ; their official length was forty
minutes, and when he arrived, always a quarter of an hour
late, it was to stand with his back to the stove for another
ten minutes telling us exceedingly funny stories with the
Jewish lisp I came to know so well in Germany. He
diligently set us canons and other exercises, but there was
seldom time even to look at the work we brought, much
less correct our mistakes. Maas was a conscientious but
dull teacher, and if Frau Schumann, when I came to know
her later, used to say she didn't mind hearing, but couldn't
bear to look at me playing, owing to the way I managed
my hands, it was probably more my fault than his.
At first I was astonished at the lack of musical enthusiasm
among my fellow students ; gradually I came to realise
these girls and boys had come there merely to qualify for
teachers' certificates, and certainly whatever flame may
have been in their bosoms to start with was bound to burn
low in the atmosphere of superficiality and indifference
our masters distilled. The glorious part was the rest of
the music life, the concerts and the Opera. In modern
Germany, and everywhere else except Austria, some special
conductor, or the performance of some crack orchestra,
is what attracts the public ; people who will throng to hear
Mr. A.'s quartett play anything and everything would not
cross the street to hear the same works performed by any
other four, all of which is the result of boom of course.
But at Leipzig in those days you went simply to hear
the music.
The twenty Gewandhaus concerts were conducted
one and all by Reinecke, and though in other towns the
custom of playing excerpts from Wagner had been started,
such a thing was taboo in those sacred walls. Not even
the overtures of his operas were tolerated, and I remember
an all but successful attempt to bar the Siegfried Idyll.
This quite orthodox concert-piece was so ill-received, several
of the permanent subscribers staying away to mark their
indignation, that the experiment was not repeated. You
166 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877-78
could not call Reinecke an inspiring conductor, but at all
events he let the music do its own business ; there were no
carefully thought out effects, no rushings and dawdlings,
no ' Reinecke touches ' ; in short there was nothing between
you and the thing itself, which is just the quality that moves
one to the depths, as I said elsewhere, listening to Patti
on the gramophone. I suppose jaded palates cannot get
on without these artificial stimulants, but it was glorious,
when I was in Vienna the winter before the war, to find a
public too fresh and keen to need them.
What a curious place that old Gewandhaus was ! Built,
as its name ' Cloth-Hall ' indicates, for anything but music,
and in defiance of all known laws of acoustics, its sonority
was nevertheless perfect. Acoustics are queer things —
so queer that, pondering them, imaginations run riot.
An old gentleman from Magdeburg once told us how a
door had been opened in the wall of some concert-room, to
the complete destruction of its sonority. Horrified, the
Town Council blocked up the door again with the very same
bricks — ' aber es ntitzte nichts — hin war die Akustik ! '
(it was of no use — the sonority was gone). In spite of
the delicate touch about the bricks it had walked off in
disgust to return no more. . . . The Gewandhaus tickets
were almost all subscribed for, and only by intrigue or
charity could you get one. But the rehearsals the day
before were supposed to be the real thing, especially as
they only cost 2s. and to us Conservatorists nothing at all.
Old ladies used to bring their knitting to the concerts in those
days, an enchanting practice, as stimulating, I am sure,
to aesthetic enjoyment as a cigarette ; but it was put down
as ' bourgeois ' in the smart new Concert Hall built three
or four years later . . . alas ! alas ! . . .
The chamber music, in the beautiful ' Little Saal '
behind the other, was on the same lines, simple, sincere,
and run by local men ; and as the Director of the Stadt
Theater was that go-ahead old genius Angelo Neumann —
a man who scented out talent as a pointer marks down
game — and the orchestra practically the same as played in
the Gewandhaus, the Opera was probably at its best then.
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 167
One chapter in an old-fashioned tale for children called
' The Story without an End ' begins : ' As for the child
he was lost in a dream of delight ' ; so it was with me
during my first season in Leipzig. Great art joys may come
to you in later life, but nothing can ever equal a first hearing
of Beethoven's A Minor Symphony, or Schubert's C Major
Quintett, in the company of kindred spirits like the Rontgens
and others then unknown to me — for my greatest musical
friendship was yet to be. When the orchestra was tuning
for my first Beethoven Symphony I remember trembling
all over like a horse at covert side, and being far too agitated
to note the themes.
In October Frau Schumann played at a Chamber Music
Concert, and B. walked Place de Repos with a halo, for
his was to be the privilege of turning over for her, she and
his father being very old friends. Before a concert, being
the most nervous of women, she habitually wept in the
artist's room, declaring to the last moment she could not
possibly go on to the platform ; surely then a greater
sacrifice to old friendship could not be imagined than
associating herself in public with this near-sighted,
abnormally clumsy youth. Of course the worst happened ;
at one moment the music was on Frau Schumann's knees,
thence violently shot by her on to the floor, but mercifully
there was no break in the performance. A very few months
later I got to know her intimately ; she was subject to
rather loveable attacks of fury, just like a child, and was
very funny on the subject of B. I thought of her years
afterwards when attending one of Madame Lind-Gold-
schmidt's singing classes, in the course of which two pupils
left the room in tears. The old school had no patience
with stupidity.
During the early part of the winter, an event happened
which even now it almost turns me pale to think of, and
oddly enough two scenes in the drama were played on the
frozen pond of the Johannisthal. I was working terrifically
hard, among other things practising the piano five hours
daily, and had made rather friends with a flibberty-gibbet
168 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877-78
of a Swiss girl, a Miss Heimlicher, whom I persuaded to
skate with me at the only hour that did not interfere with
my work, before breakfast. There was also a certain
young Englishman who paid me much attention, and even
went so far, after I had fainted one day on the ice and come
to with my head on his knee, as to propose marriage. If
I mention the fact it is because it is pertinent to the story
— not in a spirit of boasting ; for I have always believed
the two or three men who have thus honoured me knew
perfectly well there was not the slightest danger of their
being accepted, so were free to indulge in that priceless
luxury of the young, an unrequited attachment.
One day Frau Professor said to me : ' It is a pity Fraulein
Heimlicher associates so much with that Miss B., for she
has a very bad reputation.' This was a clincher. I had
already caught certain remarks in the Conservatorium, and
felt that steps must be taken, so at last I told my friend
what I had heard. She was much agitated and asked
what she should do ? Having, in spite of my folly, some
rudiments of common sense, and an English dread of libel
laws, I said : ' Say nothing, but gradually drop her/ My
memory is categoric on that point. Miss Heimlicher
thanked me profusely, said I was a true friend, and for a
few days I saw nothing of her. . . . The next thing was a
lawyer's letter, handed in by an official, commanding my
appearance in three weeks' time in Court, on a charge of
libel brought against me by Miss B. ! . . .
Now it must be remembered that one of my father's
reasons for refusing his consent to my leaving home was
that he fancied I was a spendthrift, and that my mother's
diamonds would one day have to be sold to pay my debts ;
also that my allowance was only just sufficient to meet my
needs. I knew the terrific penalties enforced in English
libel cases, and for an hour or two my heart seemed con-
tinually on the point of ceasing to beat. I turned over in
my mind what was to be done, whose advice could be
asked. Either because I did not know her well enough,
or from pride, or some other reason, I ruled out Frau
Rontgen and eventually, knowing he was a kind shrewd old
fellow, I confided in Jadassohn. ' You must have a lawyer,'
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 169
he said. A lawyer ! where was the fee to come from ?
But Jadassohn had a good friend, one Ernst Meyer, a
devilish clever fellow ; he would give me a line to him
saying I was his pupil, and the cost would be nothing to
speak of, half a crown perhaps but not more. He looked
up the address, off I started, rang a bell, and was ushered
into the office of the most odious, inhuman, filthy old
scoundrel I ever beheld. Alas ! though kindness itself,
Jadassohn was more than casual, and there being about
twenty Ernst Meyers in the address book, several of whom
were in the legal profession, he had picked out the wrong
one, as I found out when it was too late ! This repellant
person read the letter and must certainly have known there
was a mistake somewhere, but merely enquired what my
business was, informed me I had not a leg to stand on,
and would I please hand over ten marks to start with ?
I had only six with me, gave him five of these on account,
and after certain notes were taken, asked anxiously what
sort of penalty was to be expected ? With an icy-cold
indifference, for which I hope he is now burning elsewhere,
he replied : ' Impossible to say ; anything from a hundred
to a thousand marks. Good morning/
A hundred to a thousand marks ! that is from £5 to
£50 ! I walked out of that office as near despair as I have
ever been in my life, and determined to go for advice to
our Director. The old monster received me more in sorrow
than in anger, said he had heard of this distressing matter,
and that it was a terrible thing to blast the fair fame of
one of his children (for thus, so I was told, he looked upon
all the 300 of us). Painful though it might be, he feared
I deserved the lesson I was about to receive, and that
Justice must run her course ; it was not for him to
interfere. . . .
What next ? . . . I collected my ' grandeurs ' (a few
lockets and an old watch) told the whole story to my
admirer, pressed a parcel into his hands, and besought him
to sell the contents for me. Next day he produced about
£3, feared it was very little, but assured me he had done
his best. Years afterwards, having acquired knowledge of
market values, I came to the conclusion that if he got los.
170 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED i877-78
for the lot he did wonders, and that the balance must have
come out of his own slender pocket.
My next move was quite fantastic. Among the skaters
was a nice-looking man about thirty, who I somehow found
out was a lawyer, and actually counsel for the plaintiff !
I forthwith introduced myself, and no doubt to his intense
astonishment and amusement, begged his advice on my
sad case. He was very kind and sympathetic, and finally
said : ' You must have heard this report from someone
else ; well, if that person won't come forward you are
perfectly entitled to name him or her as your authority,
and there's an end of the thing as far as you are concerned/
As a matter of fact I had just mentioned the subject of
responsibility to Frau Professor, but was met with such
floods of tears, and such implorings not to take the bread
out of the mouth of a widow, that I was remorseful for
having spoken. So I thanked the lawyer and said I did
not see my way to taking the course he suggested.
My final action, as the dreaded Day of Judgment
approached, was probably better inspired than I realised
at the time ; I wrote, and delivered with my own hand at
his door, a letter to the Director, saying I had no money to
pay a large fine, should certainly not borrow, but go to
prison ; all I asked of him was not to let the matter get to
the ears of my parents, &c., &c. No doubt the letter was
melodramatic and ridiculous, but the old wretch must have
felt it was sincere and been rather alarmed at the turn
things were taking, for as I afterwards found out, Miss B.
was more or less under his protection. Whether he inter-
vened or not I never knew of course, but when I arrived
at the Court — not, as I anticipated, a huge place thronged
with an expectant public, but merely a dingy room up a
back street, in which were neither the plaintiff nor her
counsel but just a few stray lawyers — I was told that if I
wrote a becoming apology, expressing my belief in the
spotless character of the young lady, and paid the costs,
all would be forgiven and forgotten. Who shall blame me
if under the circumstances, though with inward groanings
that cannot be uttered, I put my name to the required lie ?
In the end the £3 saw me about half way through the whole
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 171
business, but it was quite the worst nightmare of my life.
I may add that the friendship with Miss Heimlicher died
a natural death, and that soon after, though I think no one
knew what had happened, Miss B. disappeared from the
scene.
Long afterwards, in fact early in the present century,
I learned that my kindly young Englishman had taken
Holy Orders — of course ! — and eventually become Head
Master of a very flourishing preparatory school. Finding
to my surprise that one of my nephews was being educated
there, I asked in a fit of sentimental curiosity what kind
of person the Head was ? ' Oh, just the usual sort of beast, '
replied my nephew, and with mingled feelings of awe and
disgust he then learned that the beast might have been
his uncle.
CHAPTER XVII
WINTER 1877-1878
BY this time I had separated the wheat of instruction from
the chaff, and evolved a reasonable Plan of Hours. My
only friends were still the Rontgens, a state of things that
suited me exactly, for I knew well the condition of perfect
liberty is being absolutely unknown. Nevertheless one
day shortly before Christmas I at last put on a pair of
tidy gloves, and getting myself up to look as English
and conventional as possible, went to call upon Frau
Dr. Brockhaus, the only person I had a letter of intro-
duction to. Doubts had been cast on the value of this
introduction by my parents, inasmuch as it had been
given me by Mary Schwabe 's mother-in-law, the celebrated
philanthropist Madame Schwabe, who held Queens and
Empresses in the hollow of her hand, who swept every-
one she met into the whirlpool of her activities, and who
had hypnotised me into giving a concert at Camberley,
shortly before my departure for Germany, in aid of some
Institution of hers at Naples. And as I have said the
family of Schwabe was not in favour at Frimhurst just
then. It turned out, however, that Frau Dr. Brockhaus
was one of the great ladies of Leipzig, and I was most
cordially welcomed there, this delightful house eventually
becoming my home during my first winter abroad. Oddly
enough, on the occasion of a second visit I met a Neapolitan
scoffer, who declared that the main object of Madame
Schwabe's Institution at Naples was to persuade the boys
who dive for pennies in the Bay of Naples to wear swimming
drawers ; but this, Frau Doctor explained, was not to be
taken seriously.
Herr Dr. Brockhaus, head of the firm, was a melancholy,
172
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 173
stiffly Saxon, orthodox personality, whose one adventure
must have been the selection of a fiery Hungarian Jewess
years younger than himself for his life's partner. Torn
between worldly and artistico-intellectual instincts, Frau
Doctor had, I think, never quite decided what her true
bent was, but at that time, two of her sons being of
marriageable age, the line was Society mitigated with a
sprinkling of the Serious. Her first kind action as far as
I was concerned was inviting me to assist at a German
Christmas under her roof. I confess that to this day I
have not made up my mind as to the merits of that great
institution. People began to look pale and careworn
about it early in December, and spent half January recover-
ing from exhaustion. Where there are crowds of very
young children it may be worth all this fuss, but on the
whole I prefer other manifestations of German thoroughness.
Immediately after the festival, Frau Doctor went off
to their country place near Dresden — ostensibly on busi-
ness but probably to recoup — and declared it was her
intention to institute herself my mentor on her return,
and introduce me into the World. The next great festival,
seeing the Old Year out, was celebrated by me at the
Rontgens. We had »a grand feast, with sweet champagne
in very long, narrow glasses that held nothing, pate de
joie gras, and hot punch — a red essence of some unknown
alcoholic derivation, mixed to one's taste with boiling
water. I noticed as on many subsequent occasions that
Frau Rontgen, whose digestion was magnificent, picked
all the truffles out of her helping of foie gras and put them
on her husband's plate — a proceeding that dear man took
quite as a matter of course. After supper we all sang
part-songs in which I was tenor, when not bass, and it
was remarked by Papa Rontgen that the more punch was
drunk the more I pushed up the pitch — an interesting
effect of alcohol which makes one think that to hand it
round before certain a cappella pieces at concerts would
be a good plan. On that day Julius and Amanda became
officially engaged, and I had my first wondering view of
untrammelled German demonstrativeness.
During these months, as most of my associates knew
I74 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED i877-78
not one word of English, I had been making good progress
with German. I have always found that understanding
a foreign language as spoken is far more difficult than
learning to speak it myself — a common experience, I
daresay, of talkative and forthcoming people ; and by way
of practice, as well as from love of the theatre, had at once
started a custom of going continually to the play, especially
on Saturdays and Sundays, when there were performances
in the Old Theatre, at reduced prices, of the classics, and
also of certain well-known box-office trumps, such as ' La
Dame aux Camelias,' and ' Adrienne Lecouvreur.' I used
to buy the text in a twopenny edition, get it up thoroughly
beforehand, and install myself in the first row of stalls
where I drank in every word. Shakespere was always in
the repertory, including plays seldom performed, such as
' Coriolanus/ ' Cymbeline/ etc. ; and once I saw the three
parts of Henry VI. squeezed into two, and Richard III.
played on successive nights. Gradually I came to know
all the possible and some of the impossible plays of Goethe,
Lessing, Schiller, Racine, and even one or two of Calderon,
and these Sunday performances were always crammed.
I must have been very innocent, or perhaps only very
stupid, at that period, for I wondered what on earth the
heavy father in ' La Dame aux Camelias ' meant when he
said his son's liaison with Marguerite could not possibly
result in the ' founding of a family/ or words to that effect.
Having only a vague idea of what exactly the relation was,
I puzzled my head over that conundrum for two or three
years at least — what the French call looking for midday
at fourteen o'clock. ... On the whole I fear it was a case
of stupidity rather than innocence, for the great question
of sex was a constant preoccupation. But I would rather
have died than discuss it with any living soul.
There are one or two incidents in one's past to think
of which fills one with self-loathing. In another place I
spoke of such an incident connected with a governess's
false chignon ; but then I was a child of ten and had been
deceived, whereas when the story I am about to relate
happened, I was a grown-up maiden whom no one had
1877-78 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 175
deceived ; it was merely that ignorance had led me where
ignorance does lead the young. When the small crash
came, the proper course would have been the one I recom-
mended to Miss Heimlicher in the libel business — to do
nothing and just let the matter drop ; but this policy
comes hard to some people at all ages, and though in the
Protestant upbringing of youth truthfulness is so strongly
inculcated, we are never taught that ' toute v£rite n'est
pas bonne a dire ! ' This is the only excuse I can offer
for this regrettable occurrence, which is as follows.
In all these plays the actress who took the tragic
sympathetic parts was one Marie Geistinger, whose career
appealed to me to start with. She had been a very cele-
brated Operette singer, and if not actual creator of the
role, was a specially brilliant ' Belle Helene ' ; also, though
of course I did not know this, her success in a sister career
had been phenomenal, Archdukes, Grand Dukes, and
great nobles of all nationalities competing for her favours.
She must have been a plucky and energetic woman, for
when her voice began to go, and with it her celebrated
slimness, she vanished for two or three years, to reappear
on the stage as tragic actress. She was at that time over
fifty, had a very fine stage presence, and was a tremendous
favourite with -the public. I have no idea how the really
knowledgeable classed her, but to me, young, inexperienced,
and stage-struck, she was the ideal embodiment of all the
heroines I loved and pitied, and who were more real to me
than most living people, such as Maria Stuart, Adrienne,
Phedre, Hermione (in ' Winter's Tale ') and others. In
short I was quite mad about the Geistinger, and after the
performances used to stand for long half hours in snow or
slush to see her muffled form shoot out of the stage door
into her fly. At last I took to buying little bunches of violets
or roses and bribing the stage door-keeper to put them
in her dressing-room, with my name and a few words of
impassioned admiration on a card.
This went on for quite a long time, and at last one
happy day I was given a note from ' the gracious lady '
saying she was much touched by my attentions, and would
like to thank me in person, naming a day and hour at which
176 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1877-78
I should find her at such and such an address. The last
was an unnecessary detail, for countless times, with skates
in my hand — she lived on the way to the Johannisthal —
had I walked up her stairs and past her door to leave
fictitious notes on imaginary persons on the floor above,
but alas ! without ever having had the luck to meet her.
When the great day came, as I rang her bell it seemed my
trembling knees must surely betray my agitation to the
servant.
I don't think I have said that except in the very smartest
set, the family always occupied a room called ' the living
room ' in contradistinction to the real drawing-room, kept
for grand occasions and familiarly known as ' die gute
Stube ' (the good room). This was always a cold and
forbidding apartment, the stove being seldom lit, with
highly polished floor and chairs arranged geometrically
round the walls. Opposite the door, on a smart bit of
carpet, would be a table with plush cover, a square of
crochet work and a flower-pot in the centre, behind which,
jammed up against the wall, was the state sofa ; and the
hostess's first words invariably were : ' Bitte setzen Sie
sich auf's Sofa ! ' (' Please to seat yourself upon the sofa ').
I was ushered into the ' gute Stube/ and without any
delay the object of my adoration appeared, followed by a
shy young man whom she introduced as her husband ; and
down we two women sat on the sofa.
Then began the most banal of all banal conversations
I have ever taken part in. The Geistinger had needlework
of some kind — a paralysing fact to start with — and no
doubt was at her wit's end, poor thing, what to say to this
adoring English girl, whose German at that time was far
from fluent. As for me, the shock of seeing Maria Stuart
at close quarters, in a tight-fitting dark blue satin bodice
covered with spangles, rouged up to the eyes, and wearing
a fluffy light wig, produced a commotion in my breast as
when the tide turns against a strong wind. The husband
hovered uneasily in the background, till told somewhat
sharply to sit down, which he did, still very far off ; but
through it all I clung to the memory of the passionate
emotions of the theatre, and when asked to admire a little
1877-78 IN GEPvMANY AND ITALY 177
white dog of some odious, fluffy, yapping breed, it was
painful to have to say I only liked big dogs.
This however was a blessing in disguise, for a quite
animated discussion about the disadvantages of big dogs
in towns ensued, whereas up to that moment we really
and truly had talked about the weather like embarrassed
people in books. When it was time to go I was graciously
invited to come again, and any slight feeling of disappoint-
ment was put down to knowing that in my overpowering
shyness I had cut rather a poor figure. True, on reflection,
this greatest of great ladies on the stage seemed, in real
life, strangely unlike any lady I had ever met, but to dwell
on this thought was distasteful ; indeed the great difficulty
to people of a certain temperament is to admit the evidence
of their senses, once the imagination has been thoroughly
stirred. One won't see, won't hear, won't believe. . . .
After a decent interval I went to see her again, and yet
again. As I now perceive, she belonged to the large class
of actresses who literally have not an idea in their heads
beyond the theatre, and oh ! how distinctly I remember
noticing, in spite of my infatuation, that even in the plays
she took part in, nothing interested her except her own
role — a trait common to most prime donne I was to meet
with later on. But I got over this somehow, and though a
determination to believe in her hair and complexion had
to be abandoned, I got over that too, and our friendship,
begun in the autumn, went on well into the New Year,
though rather haltingly. Strange to say Frau Doctor, who
in some ways was very innocent, and whose conventionality
was pleasantly inconsistent, did not remonstrate. But
remonstrance was to come !
Among the grandees she introduced me to after Christmas
were the Tauchnitz family, inventors of the Tauchnitz
Edition, he — a German of course — being English Consul.
Here also I was more than kindly received, and when it
turned out that his friend Lor-r-rd Napier of Magdala was
a connection and beloved old friend of my parents there
was great enthusiasm, and Frau Doctor must have sighed
a sigh of relief. I at once succumbed to the charms of
his very pretty and intensely kind daughter-in-law, who
VOL. I. N
178 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED i877-78
like all Tauchnitzes had a fair knowledge of English manners
and customs. She had heard, and been greatly amused
about, my passion for the Geistinger, but was wholly un-
prepared for the news that we were on visiting terms. I
remember her horrified face as she said : ' Aber Kind, ganz
gewiss wurde so eine Freundschaft Ihrer lieben Frau Mama
sehr unlieb sein 1 ' (' But child, I am sure your dear Frau
Mama would greatly disapprove of such a friendship/) And
then, with infinite discretion, she proceeded to lift the veil,
Grand Dukes and all. It appeared that the young man
really was a husband of sorts, only in that world you
married, divorced, and married again as often as you pleased.
In this particular case two or three husbands had been
tried and found wanting, the poor lady's instinct being
evidently to settle down, but not, not with an elderly
admirer. In the end I quite allowed the acquaintance
must be dropped, but unfortunately the only course which
commended itself to me was to write and say so ; which
I did, adding that if she reflected on her past life she would
understand why ! I am thankful to say I got no reply to
this odious letter, indeed I had begged there might be none
— a cowardly touch added to the rest.
It is to be feared that in those days I admitted no line
of conduct, no principles, except those in which I had been
brought up, and unrepentant sinners filled me with
Pharisaical indignation. Thinking over this incident I
have often wished one could be certain the Geistinger felt
not the slightest pang about it, only amusement. It is
more than likely . . . but I regret that letter even more
than the chignon business.
CHAPTER XVIII
EARLY IN 1878
EARLY in January came the event to which, ever since its
advance announcement by Henschel in Friedrichsroda,
everything else had seemed but a prelude, the arrival of
Brahms in Leipzig to conduct his new Symphony in D
Major. Henschel turned up from Berlin at the same time,
and from him I gathered that at the extra rehearsal, to
which we outsiders were not admitted, there had been a
good deal of friction. Brahms, as I found out later, for
Henschel would have been far too loyal to admit it, was
not only an indifferent conductor, but had the knack of
rubbing orchestras up the wrong way. Moreover with
one or two exceptions — notably Rontgen, once an oppo-
nent but now an enthusiastic admirer — the Gewandhaus
musicians were inclined to be antagonistic to his music,
and indeed considered the performance of any new work
whatsoever an act of condescension. As for Brahms,
accustomed to the brilliant quality of Viennese orchestras,
which was to entrance me equally when I came to know
them, he found his own race, the North Germans, cold and
sticky, and let them feel it.
Henschel also informed me the great man was staying,
as usual, with Heinrich von Herzogenberg, director of the
Bach Verein, whose beautiful wife, about whom the
Rontgens were for ever raving, was said to be the most
gifted musician and fascinating being ever met or heard
of ; Brahms had more than once remarked that, but for
her, he would never set foot in Leipzig at all. To my
mingled delight and horror I learned, too, that Henschel
had actually spoken to him about my work, telling him
179
i8o IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
I had never studied, that he really ought to look at it and
so on ; and after the general rehearsal this good friend
clutched and presented me all unawares. At that time
Brahms was clean shaven, and in the whirl of emotion I
only remember a strong alarming face, very penetrating
bright blue eyes, and my own desire to sink through the
floor when he said, as I then thought by way of a compli-
ment, but as I now know in a spirit of scathing irony : ' So
this is the young lady who writes sonatas and doesn't know
counterpoint ! ' I afterwards learned that Henschel had
left a MS. of mine (two songs) with him, that he subse-
quently looked at them, and remarked to Frau Ro'ntgen
that evidently Henschel had written them himself !
I saw him again during that week, but as all my reliable
impressions of him belong to a later period, when I came to
know him well, it is safer to speak here of the Symphony,
which, though it deeply impressed me, left me a little
bewildered. I had yet to learn that only a conductor of
genius — for preference not the composer, except in very
rare cases — can produce a new orchestral work intelligibly ;
at that time too the idiom of Brahms was unfamiliar, and
doubtless the rendering lacked conviction. One thing
I well remember, that on this occasion I first realised
exactly how much critics grasp of a new work not yet
available in print. The great Leipzig Extinguisher, after
making the usual complaints as to lack of melody, excess
of learning, and general unsatisfactoriness, remarked :
' About half way through the very tedious first movement
there is one transient gleam of light, a fairly tuneful passage
for horns/ He had not noticed this was the recurring
first theme, which had already appeared for those self-
same horns in the second bar ! ! . . .
The Rontgens, Klengels, etc., who were full of enthusiasm
for the Symphony, had been asked to meet Brahms at the
Herzogenbergs, and I heard more and more about the
wonderful ' Frau Lisl ' whom I wondered if I should ever
meet, for they said she detested society and saw no one
but a handful of intimates.
• •••••
Meanwhile I had discovered that living ' en pension '
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 181
was unnecessary extravagance, and determined to go
into rooms — a plan Frau Professor took in excellent part.
This time luck was emphatically on my side. Next door
to Frau Doctor Brockhaus,who lived in the Salomonstrasse —
one of the new residential streets on the other side of the
town, all big houses with wooded gardens — I had often
noticed a picturesque, French-looking old house, two storied,
with tiled roof and dormer windows, standing well back in
its ramshackle grounds. One day, lo and behold ! I saw
hanging on the paling a little board with the device
' moblirte Zimmer ' (furnished rooms), and the end of it
was that I took up my abode there on February i, 1878.
My new landlady, Frau Brandt, was a nice but very
untidy woman with a howling mob of children. There was
only one room at my disposal, and that with the wrong aspect
too — a point I had learned to take interest in ; but as I
had fallen head over ears in love with the house and knew
it was to pass into other hands in the summer, I decided
to put up with everything, provided satisfactory arrange-
ments could be made for the future.
I don't think I have yet said what perhaps goes without
saying, that it was always understood that I should pass
the long vacation — in other words the summer — at home ;
also that Papa and certain relations had been confident
that the desire to live abroad, being merely a whim, would
not survive my first winter. By this time, however, they
were disillusioned on that point and not surprised to hear
I was deep in domiciliary plans for the autumn. The in-
coming people were interviewed, and finding we suited
each other perfectly, I secured the promise of two rooms
I had set my heart on and settled down contentedly for
the time being in Pandemonium.
As I only spent four months in the single room with the
wrong aspect, I will describe my lodgings and my manner
of life generally as they were in the following autumn,
and during the rest of the time I lived in that fascinating
eighteenth-century house.
^ An ingenious system was arranged between my land-
lady and myself, under which I ate my midday meal either
with the family or at a restaurant, according to the way
182 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
my day was planned ; but I invariably had supper in my
own room. I would buy a quarter of a pound of cold ham
and some butter (a store of beer was always in the corner
of my sitting-room), and there, when I came home after a
concert or the theatre, I found the table ready laid with
a hunk of black bread on it. The outside wall sloped about
half way up, and my larder was a new birdcage, resting,
among wild vine leaves, on the rain-gutter below the dormer
windows, and leaning crazily against the roof. There were
adventures with cats, but the birdcage defeated them.
On the other side of the house, separating the front garden
from the road, was a seven-foot wooden paling, made of
uprights and cross bars, the gate in which was locked by
law at ii P.M., but it was of the sort an agile person who
has forgotten the huge rusty latchkey could climb, in spite
of the spikes. Sometimes there would be belated passers-
by or a policeman ; if so one walked on up a side street and
returned when the coast was clear. When I came to know
the smart people, nothing astonished them more than that
this feat was performed on an average two or three times
a month.
It was of course quite unusual for girls of my class
either to go to restaurants or walk about the streets alone
at night, and at first friends used to implore me to let a
servant see me home ; but neither that, nor any other
curtailment of my liberty, would I permit. Only once was
I spoken to by a strange man in Germany, and remember
insisting on the fact to Charlie Hunter, who remarked that
was surely nothing to boast about.
Reflecting on it all I am astonished to think how calmly,
on the whole, my Mentor, now my neighbour, took my
proceedings. In the depths of her southern soul was a
secret strain of Bohemianism which the rigours of bourgeois
life in a particularly conventional North German town
had not wholly eradicated; probably she felt too, that
though I really did my best to please her on side issues,
there was nothing to be done with the ground plan. I
know that often when I asked her advice she would say
in a tragi-comic voice : ' Was niitzt's dass ich dir einen
Rath gebe ? folgen wirst du doch dich ! ' (< What's the use
i878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 183
of giving you advice ? I know you won't follow it ! ')
Moreover she was clever enough to see that though the
' nice people/ by way of explaining their indulgence to
her protegee, were for ever reminding each other feverishly
that I was English (a card I played, alas, poor England !
for all it was worth), as a matter of fact I met with more
than tolerance, and but for the circumstance that nothing
really counted for me but my work, should have been in
a fair way to become terribly spoiled. My little song
' Rothraut,' sung with a strong English accent, had a great
success everywhere, and the Brockhaus boys presented me
with a black velvet student's cap lined with red silk, round
which was embroidered in gold and scarlet the music and
words of the first line. I still have this treasure, which
moths have respected, and of course adored the music-
ridden German nation more than ever.
Invitations to balls — a great temptation — poured in, and
as I had left all my finery in England there were anxious
confabulations with Frau Doctor (who wished me to do her
credit) followed by endless letters to mother, full of ingenious
and economical suggestions on the toilette question. The
worst of all this gaiety was that the candle was now being
burned at both ends, but kind Frau Doctor was, I fancy,
too interested in my social career to grasp that fact ; any-
how I cannot recall her advising me to put the brake on.
CHAPTER XIX
EARLY IN 1878
BY this time I was beginning to get some idea of social
conditions in Leipzig and noticed there was a fairly sharp
division between three main classes — the Burgher Aris-
tocracy (or worldly), the Professorial set, and the Artists.
To begin with the first ; its kernel was the ' Gewand-
haus Gesellschaft/ a group of about forty leading families,
not necessarily wealthy, who had intermarried for genera-
tions and owned most of the woodland villages round
Leipzig. It was governed by intricate laws like the ancient
guilds, and nobles were excluded from membership. Among
these burgher patricians patriarchal customs prevailed ;
in the town married sons and their families generally
occupied upper floors of the paternal dwelling, which as
often as not was in the same building as their business.
In the summer the whole party migrated to the country
house (always within easy reach of the town), and while
' der Bappa ' and ' die Mamma ' inhabited the ' Schloss ' —
generally a pleasant, homely erection no more like a castle
than is many a French ' chateau ' — the young people were
dotted about the grounds in not very tasteful villas. This
world had the defects and virtues of all provincial society,
and although, as I have indicated, they made kindly
allowances for strangers, among themselves their manners
were stiff and their ideas rather narrow, always excepting
a certain leading family I shall introduce by-and-by.
The rural aristocracy (Land Adel) played no great
part in Leipzig society, but later on I saw some of them
in their own preserves and found them more like ourselves
than the burgher patricians. In fact one realised, as
184
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 185
that fierce rule of the Gewandhaus Gesellschaft I quoted
indicates, that the two classes had kept strictly aloof
till quite recent times, with no such medium as our English
gentry — blessed result of the open-aristocracy system — to
bridge the gulf. The Gewandhaus set was frequented by
the military — Generals of 1870, for instance, in slightly
patronising mood and smothered with orders, whose wives
gave themselves amazing airs ; also by stray members of
the Land Adel dotted about the country round Leipzig,
who occasionally deigned to mix with the rich bourgeois
and drink their champagne. You even met sprigs of
Royalty in course of being laboriously coached for their
degrees by obsequious professors . . . between whiles seeing
life under the guidance of our young swells. Despite the
pride of class that I so much admired in the old Leipzig
families, much fuss was made over these visitors from a
higher sphere.
As for the Professors and their belongings — a group stiff
with intellectual pretension, whose exaggerated display of
mutual respect masked mutual hatred and jealousy I have
never seen equalled — these I detested at first sight and
after one or two essays kept out of their way for ever more.
My initiation into this world — a ' Professoren-Ball ' to
which Frau Doctor got me an invitation — is one of the
fantastic experiences of my life. Imagine the guests of
a Lambeth Palace Garden Party of thirty years ago sud-
denly ordered at a moment's notice to appear for the first
time in their lives in a ballroom. . . . There were stuff
gowns turned in at the neck in a V with a bit of lace sewn
in ; there were black trousers worn beneath grey waist-
coats ; there were gaudy students' jackets besmeared with
stains from the restaurant ; and, worst of all, tubs were
evidently unknown in the intellectual world. Maidens
writhed with archness and never ceased giggling, young
men bowed, scraped, and declaimed, flourishing their arms
about, and at one moment I found myself dancing the
Lancers opposite a youth whose hair was half-way down
his back, who wore someone else's swallow-tailed coat,
and who was cutting elaborate capers such as a gorgeous
Highlander might have envied, in a pair of double-soled
i86 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
boots covered with mud ! . . . The elegance of the really
great world is incontestable everywhere ; once, when I
had a fugitive glimpse of a peasant's ball in the Bavarian
Highlands, with its beautiful national costumes, long
pipes, and unaffected jollity, I asked myself, as I do now,
why, between Paul Veronese and Jan Steen, must there
be this vast tract of senseless, hybrid commonness ? . . .
And yet the professor tribe frisking in ballrooms is
more sympathetic than pontificating at dinner tables and
in drawing-rooms. Needless to say there were remarkable
men among them, people of European reputation whom
it was interesting to watch, but not one single remarkable
woman. There is a phrase for ever on German female lips
that used to irritate me : ' Mein Mann sagt . . .' (' my
husband says . . . '), but as uttered by the ignorant,
arrogant wives of these infallible ones it is the least attrac-
tive side of German life in a nutshell. In fact the general
atmosphere of the Professoren-Kreise 1 (I am speaking
figuratively — not alluding to their ballrooms) was un-
breathable.
The Artists who, as goes without saying, were my chief
associates, were sometimes to be found wandering about
forlorn in the circles of Professordom, but they professed
and sincerely felt unmitigated contempt for the worldlings,
and were seldom if ever met in their haunts. As stranger
and Englanderin — and in those days Germans had a
sneaking respect for English freedom of spirit, and above
all for English table-manners — I was admitted to all these
various groups, and confess it was delightful to meet again
among the rich burghers certain habits of life one was
accustomed to, but might vainly hope to find elsewhere in
Leipzig — things like tubs, horses, and tennis, for instance.
Even to have the door opened by a smart footman was
not without its appeal ; and when some of my artist friends
wondered how anyone could care to frequent such frivolous
society I would stolidly reply : ' In my father's house are
many mansions ' — a phrase which, in the German equiva-
lent, ' in meines Vater's Haus sind viele Wohnungen,' lends
itself with very comic effect to a strong English accent
1 Professorial Circles ; thus they describe themselves.
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 187
and for that reason had a great success. It is almost
impossible for a young artist to avoid being narrowed in
matters artistic by his own set, but socially I have always
held firmly to a profound, hereditary conviction that it
takes all sorts to make a world.
Later on I found that the snobbism of rank and wealth
is of course the same in Dresden and Berlin as in London
or other capitals, but the one type you never met at Leipzig
was the International Smart. I could name twenty such,
labelled English, French, German, or Italian, as the case
may be, who wear the same clothes, think the same thoughts,
and are practically identical ; such of course never dreamed
of coming to Leipzig, hence you could there study German
burgher life in a state of comparative purity.
In all the different groups mentioned the particular! st
feeling was sure to crop up sooner or later. Stray Prus-
sians were perpetually having digs at the Saxons whom
they considered servile, false, and rather stupid. The
Saxons, for their part, cordially hated the Prussians, but
also feared them ; for which reason, not being a race dis-
tinguished for moral courage, their sentiments were only
revealed in an outburst or in confidence. Some of the
Saxon turns of speech certainly tend to give their own
case away ; for instance an adjective I have never heard
elsewhere is * hinterrucksch/ used to qualify people who
take malevolent action behind your back ; and a real good
old Leipzig joke is to say, if someone disappears without
apparent reason from the circle, ' He must have taken
offence at something ! ' But their most characteristic
phrase is one that prefaces any remark whatsoever which,
if repeated, might have unpleasant consequences : ' ich will
nichts gesagt haben ! ' — whereby you are warned that if
necessary the remark will be disavowed. Farther than
this caution cannot go ! Still, as soon as I became capable
of distinguishing, I infinitely preferred the kindly, humane,
homely Saxons to the overbearing Prussians, particularly
after a winter spent in Berlin.
From the very first dialect interested me — a matter
which can be only studied to a very limited extent among
the educated in our islands ; thus I soon mastered the
i88 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
varieties and found out what a soul-revealing medium it
is. To speak of only a few blatant instances, the Prussian
dialect is harsh, clean-cut, and uncompromising; the
Bavarian, though easy-going and good-natured on the
surface, suggests fathomless depths of brutality below;
whereas through the Austrian turn of speech— careless,
fascinating, and slightly nasal— there gleams at its worst
a cold, smiling, rather Oriental cruelty as unlike brutality
as the East is unlike the West. But in the peculiar language
spoken in Leipzig, including diction, intonation, and every
imaginable harmonic, there is a deliberate wallowing in the
inesthetic, a culte of the ungraceful, of which Leipzigers
themselves are quite conscious though few emancipate
themselves wholly from its thraldom. And no one reviles
the Saxon dialect more mercilessly than travelled Saxons.
Meanwhile, in whatever set I might happen to find
myself, three names were constantly on all lips, uttered
with respect, admiration, or devotion, as the case might
be. Hitherto for various reasons I had met none of these
evidently remarkable personalities ; then suddenly Fate
made good, and in the course of a single week Livia Frege,
Lili Wach, and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg swam into
my orbit.
When you whisper certain names to yourself a cathedral
lights up in the dark recesses of memory, and all who knew
her would agree that the name Livia Frege is one of these.
In her youth she had been a very celebrated concert singer,
and some of Mendelssohn's and Schumann's finest songs
are dedicated to ' Livia Gerhardt ' ; now, on the threshold
of old age, she was a great lady, but also the simplest-
hearted, warmest friend of every true artist in the place.
One of those women born to the purple, with the prestige
of a glorious artistic past thrown in, there was a sheer
lovableness about her that I partly ascribe to the bluest,
most eternally youthful eyes ever seen. She had married
when very young a Leipzig banker and left the concert
room for ever ; some say nothing short of this renunciation
would satisfy the burgher-patrician parents-in-law, but to
separate Livia Frege from music was beyond anyone's power.
i878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 189
I first met her in the sort of State Box over the orchestra
in the old Gewandhaus, which, though other mortals in
part owned it, was always called the ' Frege Loge.' She
had heard of me from the Rontgens, and when someone
told this Queen that in the little basket I hung on a peg
in that sacred box was a parcel of cold ham, she replied
according to legend : ' And pray why not ? ' in a manner
that rolled the would-be mischief-maker out flat. Li via
had once been a very poor young artist herself, but perhaps
her interlocutor had forgotten the fact. Though stately to
a degree, and prejudiced in an old-fashioned pleasant way,
she took me at once into her good graces, told me to call
her ' Du ' and ' Frau Li via/ and I am certain had pleasure
in the adoration it was impossible even for the old and
cold, let alone the young and hot, to help lavishing on her.
She was very religious, not in the alternately blatant
and gushing style affected by many pious Germans and
hall-marked by the Hohenzollerns, but with absolute
simplicity. On the subject of evil communications cor-
rupting good manners she was particularly strong, and
once told me she had never listened to a Wagner opera
because she wished to keep herself ' musically pure/
Said as she said it, and given her past, this was not in
the least unsympathetic ; it fitted in somehow with her
gentle, serious idealism, which again was saved from
sentimentality by a gift of pealing laughter that made
heavy-minded admirers stare. So beautiful, so dignified,
almost an old woman, and yet able to nearly die of laugh-
ing like the very young ! I used to note the beauty in
her face and voice when she spoke of Mendelssohn, who,
with his wife, had been of her most intimate friends.
A world that since then had begotten Brahms, not to
speak of Wagner, was growing contemptuous of its former
idol, and she was aware of the fact, but did not consider
it necessary even to discuss the matter. No insistence on
his merit, no apology — just the old love and faith. I
thought this attitude wonderful, but to carry it through
you had to be Livia of the light-holding sapphire eyes.
Years after her death H. B. once said casually : ' Ah
yes — Frau Frege — she was Mendelssohn's mistress, wasn't
igo IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
she ? ' Recovered from the shock of realising that even
in a world as mad as ours such a legend could have a
second's life, we began inventing analogous questions, such
as ' Didn't S. Theresa elope with Ignatius Loyola ? ' or
' Wasn't George Sand Musset's grandmother ? ' etc., etc.,
but to those who knew my old Leipzig friend nothing as
fantastic as the original proposition can be coined.
Frau Livia had a weakness for princes, which fact was
commented on sarcastically by some of the worldlings
and may have secretly troubled simple-minded humbler
friends. But as these never found themselves neglected
because of the Royalties where was the harm ? To the
market of life this highly inbred race brings a quite special
contribution, to take no interest in which is surely not a
sign of superiority ? indeed one can say of Royalty what
has been said of God, that if it did not exist it would have
to be invented. The proof is that again and again it has
been swept away ... to be re-instated by succeeding
generations ; and so I hope and believe it will be to the
end of time.
Many a young musician used to be given a preliminary
canter at Frau Livia's house before a select audience, and
it was on the first of these occasions attended by me that
I met the two other bright jewels in Leipzig's crown.
Lili Wach was the only absolutely normal and satis-
factory specimen I have ever met of a much-to-be-pitied
genus, the children of celebrated personalities ; she was
Mendelssohn's youngest daughter, and judging by their
portraits must have been more like her Christian mother
than her Jewish father. Yet both the delicately cut profile
and soul to match had a touch of Israel at its best, and
she used to say : ' Make allowance for Jewish caution ! '
when a certain shrinking from positive statements held
back the emphatic ' Yes ' or ' No ' demanded. She was
very musical, but being her father's daughter and extremely
reserved by nature she kept the fact so dark that few
people knew it.
Her husband, a distinguished Prussian lawyer, was
notoriously musical. One of the most interesting men I
have ever met, he was also, as I realised later, a typical
LILI WACH (nee MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY), 1877.
i878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 191
modern German in many respects. Yet not in all, for
though Professor of Jurisprudence at the Leipzig University
and terrifically learned, there was not the faintest touch
of pedantry about him — a fact which privately scandalised
some of his Saxon colleagues. Man of action and politician
he was suspected of aiming at high honours in the Prussian
bureaucracy, and it was the fashion to question the sincerity
of his religious convictions which were of the Hohenzollern
brand ; but being fond of him I put this down to jealousy.
One day, however, at a funeral from a friend's house, where
the usual speechifying round the coffin was led by the
pastor in the orthodox inflated style — a style even culti-
vated people accept as the proper thing — what was my
astonishment at hearing Wach hold forth in exactly the
same key ! . . . Wach, of all critics of other men's oratory
the most pitiless ! Since then, having re-read the Book
of Joshua, and grasped that the role of God in the Prussian
world-scheme is identical with that of Jehovah in the
Wars of Israel, it seems likely that Wach, an ambitious
man, deliberately poured sincere convictions into this
particular mould. That is why he was a typical figure.
Otherwise the most spontaneous of beings, warm-hearted,
tempestuous, and brimming with sense of humour, his
wife would plead with gentle irony that there was enough
violence, vitality, and definite assertion in the house with-
out her emerging from her shell.
My friendship with Lili Wach was destined to become
only second to the still closer relation I am about to speak
of. As for Wach, who had a great reputation as moun-
taineer, his wife always maintained it was natural that
we should have taken to each other at first sight, being
chips of the same block. His theories on large families,
which I have confessed to sharing, were ultimately her
death, she being far too frail for child-bearing on the scale
he insisted on. But I loved these too numerous children,
in whose eyes, because of clambering over the paling (and
later on because of a big dog of mine) I became a sort of
legendary figure, and with whom I kept up a warm friend-
ship that only the war interrupted.
CHAPTER XX
EARLY IN 1878
AND now, if these memoirs were a Masque, I should bid
the musicians and electricians conspire with me to usher
on becomingly the last and best beloved of my trio of
L's — Lisl, otherwise Elisabeth von Herzogenberg.
The published correspondence between her and Brahms,
and also various references to her in his Biography, have
given the world some idea of the personality of this
remarkable woman, in whose house I became what he
always called me, ' the child/ till Fate violently and irre-
vocably parted us. At the time I first met her she was
twenty-nine, not really beautiful but better than beautiful,
at once dazzling and bewitching ; the fairest of skins,
fine-spun, wavy golden hair, curious arresting greenish-
brown eyes, and a very noble rather low forehead, behind
which you knew there must be an exceptional brain. I
never saw a more beautiful neck and shoulders ; so marvel-
lously white were they, that on the very rare occasions on
which the world had a chance of viewing them it was apt
to stare — thereby greatly disconcerting their owner, whose
modesty was of the type that used to be called maidenly.
In fact the great problem was to prevent her swathing
them in chiffon.
About middle height, the figure was not good ; she
stooped slightly, yet the effect was graceful and ingratiating,
rather as though she were bending forward to look at you
through the haze of her own golden atmosphere. In spite
of this aetherial quality there was a touch of homeliness
about her — to use the word in its best sense — a combina-
tion I have never met with in anyone else. Of great
natural capacity rather than well informed, a brilliant,
192
1878
IN GERMANY AND ITALY
193
most original talker, very amusing, and an inimitable
mimic, she managed in spite of all her gifts to retain the
childlike spirit which is one of the sympathetic traits in
the German character— and what is more, to blend it with
the strong-pinioned fascination of one who could but know,
like Phyllis in the song, that she never failed to please.
And this is surely a remarkable achievement ! It really
was true that with her sunshine came in at the door,
and both sexes succumbed equally to her charm. As her
marriage was notoriously happy, possibly too because
her brilliant talents inspired a certain awe, men did not
dare make love to her, not at least the sort of men she
met at Leipzig. But I fancy that in other circumstances
a small flirtation would not have been disdained ; I used
to tell her that when talking to men she became a different
woman — a difference which though slight was perceptible
— but this mild accusation didn't fit in with her scheme
of things and was eagerly repudiated.
In a burgher world it certainly went for something that
this siren was an aristocrat. Sincerely as everyone in
the artist set despised worldliness, I think her exploits in
the kitchen (for among other things she was a heaven-
inspired cook) gained in picturesqueness when you reflected,
that had the Court of Hanover not come crumbling about
their ears in early youth, she and her sister Julia Brewster
would have been Maids of Honour. Logic has made great
strides in Germany, but at that time there were still a few
illogical people about.
The essential point was of course her musical genius.
Almost by instinct she read and played from score as do
few routined conductors, and in judgment, critical faculty,
and all round knowledge was the perfect musician. And
yet, though if ever I worshipped a being on earth it was
Lisl, her singing and playing left me cold. This critical
attitude on the part of a novice might well have vexed
one accustomed to unqualified admiration on all sides,
from Brahms downwards ; but being quite unspoiled she
was only puzzled, and used sometimes to ask : ' How comes
it that thou alone dost not love my music-making ? ' to
which I would reply, as I believed, that thinking too much
VOL. I. O
I94 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
about voice-production and fingering interfered with her
spontaneity, never guessing that what was lacking was
the one thing needful, passion. At the bottom of all that
tender warmth and enthusiasm — ' Gemiith ' as the Germans
call it — was a curious hardness of which in all the years
of our friendship I saw but one passing sign, and which
perhaps nothing short of one of those catastrophes that
shake human nature to its foundations would have laid
bare. Her music betrayed it, but here again she was so
richly equipped, and the spell her musicality cast was so
potent, that as far as I know others were not conscious
of fundamental coldness. Years afterwards her brother-
in-law H. B. told me that he had guessed it, and once
in the early days of our acquaintanceship in Florence
(1883) I remember his saying that to drive a spear too
deeply into that soil might be to break its point. But as
I was the only outsider on spear-driving terms of intimacy
with her, no one had put it to the proof, and at the time
that remark was made it was indignantly brushed aside
by me.
I noticed early in the day, however, in connection with
a third person, that she had not much psychological instinct,
not in deep places at least. Complex natures baffled her,
and I would sometimes charge her with lacking the sort
of poetic imagination that saves you from cracking your
brain over odd twists and turns of character. ' Surely if
you do this or that, it is natural that the other person
should react thus and thus ? ' she would say in cases where
it was obvious that the person would react in quite another
manner ; and once she astonished me by writing : ' To
understand a person's action means, surely, that you
yourself would act thus in their place ? ' 1 which I thought
a fantastic interpretation of understanding.
Again I had always assumed that harmony was the
crown, the final polish, the ultimate subjection of possibly
dissonant elements, not the avoiding of dissonance for the
sake of consonance. ' Take all that comes along, all at
least that matters, and work it into your scheme somehow '
1 Appendix, ii. p, 24, No. 9.
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 195
— such was my unformulated creed . . . but it was not
Lisl's. In the light of what happened afterwards — the
eternal small crises all down the years as well as the final
breach — I see in her not only a temperamental worship
of harmony at any cost, but recognise how almost uncon-
sciously, and with infinite skill, she avoided conflicts ; also
that those who associated with her, from her husband
downwards, took care that no tempest should ruffle her
sunny serenity. This dislike of stress and storm was never
connected in my mind, nor I think in the minds of those
who conformed to it, with the valvular heart disease which
was a perpetual source of secret terror and distress to me,
and of which she was to die when relatively a young woman.
But nowadays, having noticed how an obscure instinct of
self-preservation determines the course of persons thus
afflicted, I think her malady was probably as great a factor
in our story as any other.
This by the way. Meanwhile in that Spring of 1878,
making straight for the sheltered waters on which, like an
enchanted boat, her soul was floating, there appeared on
the horizon ... a Stormy Petrel !
Herzogenberg, or, to give him his full title, Heinrich
Freiherr von Herzogenberg, was a few years older than
his wife, and had been brought up by the Jesuits for the
priesthood, as are many younger sons of noble Austrian
families ; but on reaching adolescence he rebelled in order
to devote himself to music — as unheard of a thing in his
walk of life as in mine. The family was originally French,
his grandfather, Vicomte Picot de Peccaduc, having emi-
grated to Bohemia at the time of the French Revolution
and taken the name and title of Freiherr von Herzogenberg
— a correct but inadequate rendering of his own fine
patronymic. A slight Jesuitical strain in the grandson,
which he was quite aware of but which never affected him
in the larger issues of life, worked in delightfully with his
humanness, culture, and abounding sense of humour.
Though without her glamour — and who would wish to
find two such shining ones under the same roof ? — he was
quite as much beloved by those who knew them well as
ig6 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
his wife. Of course he adored her, and in one of her
early letters, she, the least vain of women, told me how
delighted she had been, when finding himself near her at
some smart party (and of an evening she was positively
dazzling) he remarked in the dry, comic way his friends
knew so well : ' Abgesehen von aller Verwandschaft
muss ich gestehen dass du hiibsch bist ' (' Apart from
relationship I must confess that thou art pretty ').
A more learned musician can never have existed ;
without trouble he turned out fugues, canons, etc., etc.,
that could be read backwards, upside down, or in a looking-
glass — a gift that has as little to do with music, perhaps,
as tying yourself into knots or playing twelve games of
chess at once, but which is certainly rare and remarkable.
He used to compose for a given number of hours daily,
and as may be guessed the result was often dry. I know
not with what ambition he started his career, but remember
his once remarking rather touchingly that he made no
claim to having anything new to say — merely hoped to
hand on the good tradition. As was inevitable with such
a wife, he arranged all his works for piano duett, which
was one of the very few trials connected with this ideal
couple, for he had a touch like a paving stone. She was
as devoted to him as he to her, and in sympathetic com-
pany a very discreet little mutual demonstration would
sometimes take place ; this their adoring - world found
delightful, and eventually I learned to accept it as part
of the German civilisation.
The Wachs and Herzogenbergs, who at once became
the kernel of my Leipzig existence, associated but super-
ficially and in a slight spirit of superiority with various
other friends of mine to whom I was deeply attached —
worldlings in whose company, as hinted above, certain
aspects of home life were found again. Chief among these
was a family whose name heads the list when I am meditat-
ing unpayable debts for kindnesses received. The master
of the house, Consul Limburger, was a wealthy wool
merchant and the only real man of the world in Leipzig,
gay, handsome, well turned out, and without a touch
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 197
of German heaviness. Serious persons considered him
frivolous but were none the less obliged to follow his lead,
for he was the moving spirit of the whole place. As
president of the Gewandhaus Concert Committee he
fought hard against the intense conservatism of that body
and it was mainly his work that the Siegfried Idyll was
forced on to the programme — a crime to forgive him which
took all Frau Livia's Christian charity, and needless to
say she was among the absentees at that concert. He
further managed the Gewandhaus Balls, the big suppers
given to passing celebrities, and started various innova-
tions in sport, such as paper-chases on horseback and I
think polo. Finally he had the best cook in Leipzig, and
once told me his luxury was to expect whatever wine he
ordered to appear on his table and . . . never to check
his cellar-book. The same system of not enquiring into
things too closely was observed as regards his sons, and
I fear laid up trouble for him in later life.
His wife had, in certain subtle ways, more affinity
with the people one knew at home than anyone else in
the town. I cannot quite sum it up by saying she was
a gentlewoman — there were other Leipzig ladies who could
claim to be that of course — but these had a touch of pro-
vincialism, whereas behind her quality was a larger civilisa-
tion, something which I really believe none of her intimates
noticed except myself. She was of an old patrician
Frankfort family and her conversation was interlarded
with French phrases like the letters of Goethe's mother,
another Frankfort woman. Now here is a curious fact
I had no enthusiastic soul-to-soul alliance with her as with
Frau Li via and others — it was just the friendly relation
between a woman of the world and a girl she is kind to ;
and yet, at the most difficult moment of my life, merely
by taking it for granted that certain people don't do certain
things, however strongly circumstances seem to point that
way, she in great measure saved the situation for me — as
will be told when the time comes. Expressed gratitude,
expressed anything, would have embarrassed her beyond
words but . . . she knew that I knew ; and afterwards,
when terrible sorrow came to her, I think it was some
198 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
comfort to talk to me by the hour, that silent bond being
between us.
In my experience with her I first learned what sub-
sequent knowledge of life has confirmed, that when you
are in a tight place worldlings are often better Christians
than the elect. And another thing ; this old friend had
peculiarities that most people found rather ridiculous and
beyond which they never got. But such eccentricities
often argue an absence of all preoccupation with self, a
purity of spirit that seems to me beyond all else rare and
lovable — and this was her case.
The Limburgers were typically German in that, with
the exception of the mother and the one daughter, every
member of the family was as much at home in music as
ducks in water. They danced, shot, rode, skated, besides
being assiduous young men of business, but all played the
piano or some other instrument, and a new work performed
at the Gewandhaus was as much an event for them as for
the Herzogenbergs. Their criticisms may have been less
technical but I discussed music as gladly with them as
with many an expert ; and this is the supreme charm of
a musical civilisation — that amateurs are in it and of it
as well as professionals. What a bore it would be if you
could only talk books in literary circles, and what a com-
fort that reading can never become a fashionable fad, to
which, alas ! in unmusical countries music so fatally lends
itself ; thus does the smart world go to concerts in Paris,
and in London to the Opera.
Before leaving the subject of Leipzig personalities I
must mention two sisters who were an integral part of
the scene. One, Frau von B., was the widow of the only
aristocrat except Herzogenberg who had ever been a
composer of merit. This wise and wealthy man, in order
to satisfy the baulked maternal instincts of his childless
wife, had left a small fortune for the founding of a home
for seven poor musical students, to be built in his big
garden and run by his widow. On the subject of her
guardianship of these ever-recurring batches of youths,
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 199
popularly known after the well-known folk tale as ' the
Seven Ravens/ volumes might be written ; how they were
either talented but too rascally to keep, or talentless but
too charming to turn out. The true stories of their esca-
pades, together with the versions they themselves related
to their guardian, used to go the round of the town ; I
think she suspected the truth more than was generally
supposed, but like many people found it convenient to
feign ignorance.
If this kindest, most generous and lovable of old ladies
was a little on the grotesque side, her sister, Frau Dr. E.
was surely the most fantastic figure ever accepted and
assimilated by civilised society. I have described the
astonishing Leipzig dialect, but as spoken by Frau Dr. E.,
who, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet,
showed what Nature in ungracious mood can achieve when
she gives her mind to it, it killed all conversation around
her (just as the celebrated garlic of the Rosenthal over-
powered the scent of other flowery growths) ; . . . further it
was her habit to say out loud things which as a rule only
escape one in unguarded moments.
The advantage of a self-contained provincial society
is that originals are permitted to luxuriate in peace ; thus
amazing types of monk are seen prowling about in Italy
such as are only produced within monastery walls. And
when I think sadly of dead and gone romantic Germany,
it is an additional pang to reflect that with dwarfs, gnomes,
and witches on broomsticks, figures such as Frau Dr. E.
have disappeared for ever.
The first time I saw her was at a musical gathering at
her sister's ; I noticed a massive old woman yawning as
if her jaw would drop off who presently said to Frau
Rontgen : ' Do not think, best Frau Concertmeister, it is
because I am bored, but whenever your dear husband
plays the fiddle it sets me yawning/ I duly called on her
later, as politeness demanded, and when I expressed regret
at not finding her in she remarked : ' Well, I cannot say
I regret it for to tell the truth you are to me from my
heart unsympathetic — but I believe the kernel is good.'
She was a widow without family, rich and incredibly
200 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
stingy, and being devoid of false shame, many of the E.
anecdotes for ever flying about were on that theme. At
a supper she gave to the Seven Ravens I heard her say
loudly when a grand ice-cream appeared : ' This is only to
be handed round once ' ; another time, while slowly turning
the pages of a subscription list, she observed to the col-
lector without a smile : ' Let me see what is the smallest
sum one can give/ Again, cabs in those days cost five
groschen for one person, and six groschen for two. A
piteously poor friend of hers was once driven by her to
a concert, and knowing her patroness's peculiarities duly
handed over three groschen ; and the incoming stream of
concert-goers heard Frau Dr. E. say, in her slow, final
way : ' No, thou needst not pay half, but thy groschen
thou canst well pay/ whereupon she selected and pocketed
two halfpennies.
There is in many circles of society an individual corre-
sponding to the Court Fool, an enfant terrible who performs,
like Tragedy in the Aristotelian sense, a universal purgative
rite, delivering other bosoms of perilous stuff. Such a
benefactress was Frau Dr. E., than whom the world can
better spare many a more decorative figure.
CHAPTER XXI
SPRING 1878
AND now, having given some idea of the people who made
up my new world, I will go back to the moment when I
first met the Herzogenbergs, that is the end of February
1878. I knew at once for certain that we belonged in the
same group, as the ensuing years were to prove, and though
aware of her notorious aversion to new relations trusted
to music to build a bridge between us, which it did. Both
of them told me they had heard great reports of my musi-
cality and I was at once asked to show off. I well remember
that Herzogenberg was far more forthcoming than his
wife ; and though she upbraided me in a friendly, semi-
jocular manner for not having joined the Bach Verein and
urged me to do so without delay, it was he who, after cross-
questioning me about my studies, suggested I should bring
him my exercise books to look at.
Of course I turned up with them next day, and was
overwhelmed by his raillery of Conservatorium teaching, as
he pointed out one gross uncorrected error after another.
Both were genuinely interested by my compositions, but
again I noticed she was the more reserved of the two, and
understood this reserve had nothing to do with the music.
Finally Herzogenberg proposed undertaking my tuition
himself. ' It will be great fun/ he said, ' for I have never
given a lesson in my life ; and what is more/ he added,
turning to his wife, ' thou, who hast so often bewailed thy
contrapuntal ignorance, shalt also be my pupil . . . and
I shall meanwhile learn how to teach/
Needless to say I fell in rapturously with this proposal,
insisted on his accepting some nominal fee, for honour's
201
202 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
sake, ceased attending my Conservatorium classes (osten-
sibly on the score of health) and it was understood that
before leaving for the summer holidays I was to give formal
notice. I at once joined the Bach Verein and began, with
my lessons, an initiation into Bach. Strange to say he did
not reveal himself to me at once, not even in the ' Passion
according to St. Matthew' which I heard on the ensuing
Good Friday for the first time. Yet is it so strange after
all ? Between Bach and Beethoven there is at least as wide a
gulf as between Giotto and Giorgione, and at that time my
musical intelligence was only cultivated in patches. Before
six months had elapsed Bach occupied the place he has
ever since held in my heart as the beginning and end of
all music ; meanwhile the Herzogenbergs were doing their
best to speed up matters.
Shortly after joining the Bach Verein an incident
occurred which opened my eyes to the fact that Germans
harboured feelings about the English of which we had no
suspicion and which certainly were not reciprocated. My
enlightener, a stately black-bearded man with extra
polite Leipzig manners and rather a friend of mine I had
imagined, was a certain Herr Flinsch — Treasurer of the
Bach Verein, one of our leading basses, and also, although
I did not know it, a wholesale stationer. One day I went
into a smart looking shop and asked for some English
writing paper. An article was produced which did not
meet my wishes, and I began describing exactly what was
wanted, repeatedly saying : ' it must be English paper/
Suddenly from a back room in the shop, my black-bearded
friend darted out in a violent passion, and without one
word of greeting launched into a diatribe about the paper
trade — informing me that as a matter of fact all the best
so-called English paper was made in Germany, and merely
sent to England and stamped ' English ' to satisfy (alas ! )
the snobbishness of his own countrymen, who still believed
in the supremacy of English wares. A day was at hand
however when German industry would no longer suffer these
humiliations — when all the world would know where the
best of everything comes from, namely Germany. After
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 203
which outburst the speaker bounced back into his den,
again omitting any sort of greeting, and banged the door.
When next we met at rehearsal, and ever after, our relations
were distant and dignified.
During the few weeks of opportunity that remained to
me for the time being, I applied myself busily to two
tasks ; the first orders of counterpoint, and the stealthy
undermining of my fellow pupil's delicate but unmistakeable
aloofness. Meanwhile, it might be asked, what did Frau
Dr. Brockhaus, hitherto my great friend and confidant,
say to these new developments ? It had been arranged
ages ago, long before the dawning of Lisl, that I was to go
to the Berg, their country place near Dresden, for a few
days after Easter ; and though the idea of leaving Leipzig
was now intolerable, especially since the Herzogenbergs
were departing in the second half of April, I shrank from
hurting kind Frau Doctor's feelings by breaking my engage-
ment. But I was not a good hand at keeping things to
myself and she soon found out she had a rival. Yet such
was Lisl's reputation for charm, genius, and so forth, that
my older friend no more blamed me than Calypso and Circe
would have blamed Ulysses for falling in love with Minerva,
had the goddess seen fit to give that complexion to their
alliance. I duly went to the Berg, but despite warm feelings
of gratitude and affection towards my hostess, blessed
the grand final Bach Verein concert that brought me back
to Leipzig on duty after four days' absence.
Then suddenly Fate did me a good turn. Immoderate
work, combined with too much excitement generally, was
telling on me. I had among other things become subject
to violent fits of palpitation, and there were yet more
drastic warnings, such as the romantic fainting on the ice,
that health was giving way under the strain. At last one
day, at a birthday party at the Klengels, I collapsed
altogether. Lisl who was present, and who, though I was
unaware of the fact, had gradually become attached to me
in spite of herself, insisted on taking me straight back
to my attic, and during the rather severe illness that
followed, really a nervous break-down, nursed me as
I had never been nursed before, putting off her departure
204 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
from Leipzig a fortnight in order to see me through the
worst.
And there, amid the homely surroundings of sloping
roof and ramshackle furniture, began the tenderest, surely
the very tenderest relation that can ever have sprung up
between a woman and one who, in spite of her years, was
little better than a child. I had heard, but almost forgotten,
that the one sorrow of her strangely happy life was that
she was childless ; now I came to know that this grief,
though seldom alluded to, was abiding and passionate—
(as a matter of fact this was the only spot of passion in her) .
Shortly before I met her hope had finally been abandoned,
and though one or two attempts to coax unwilling nature
were made later on, it was without much hope as far as
she was concerned. Thus I became heir to a fund of pent-
up maternal love.
Every day during that happy fortnight as the clock
struck eight I heard her slowly climbing the stairs, pausing
for breath methodically at every fourth step ; then the
door curtain was pushed aside and the dear face, framed
in a haze of golden hair, peeped in cautiously lest I should
still be asleep. Asleep ! . . . when I knew Lisl was coming
. . . ! Except for two hours at midday, when her maid was
sent to mount guard, she stayed with me the whole livelong
day, washing me herself, performing all the sick-room offices
for me, cooking on her own little cooker the most tempting
dishes her culinary genius could devise, reading to me,
alternately petting and keeping me in order. And as I got
better she used to play Bach and Brahms, including her
own wonderful arrangement of the new symphony, knocked
together in a few hours from the full score lent her by him
before she had ever heard a note of it — the sort of thing
she did with no trouble, and made as light of as she did
of her heart complaint. It was settled that though my
mother must never hear of it I was really her child, that,
as she put it, she must have ' had ' me without knowing it
when she was eleven ; all this with a characteristic blend
of fun and tenderness that saved it from anything approach-
ing morbidity, of which she had the greatest horror. At
that time our conversation was carried on in both languages,
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 205
later always in German. She was one of the very few
foreigners I have met to talk English with whom was not
distressing ; her accent was admirable, not indiscreetly
so as is sometimes the case, but, like her vocabulary and
handling of the language, easy, original, funny, and somehow
or other just right — as indeed was everything about her.
At the beginning of my illness the doctor had feared
permanent heart damage ; not till this danger was finally
ruled out and my convalescence in full swing did she consent
to leave me and depart for Austria with her husband,
appointing Johanna Rontgen char gee d'affaires. At every
stage of the journey postcards were sent, and during the
two weeks that elapsed before I was fit to start for England
the daily letter was the only event that counted, though
mysterious boxes of chocolate, flowers, and books were
continually being left at my door ' by command of the
gracious lady von Herzogenberg.'
I missed her so dreadfully that most nights my pillow
was wet with tears — a babyish weakness which, when she
heard of it, touched but still more distressed her. Never
was anyone more enamoured of gaiety and serenity than
she. After her departure I was allowed to see a few friends,
and learned that in the early stages of my illness, Anna,
the servant, had remarked to one very stiff Leipzig grandee
who had asked what was wrong : ' Vielleicht ist das Fraulein
zu lustig gewesen ' (Perhaps the Fraulein has been too gay)
— the sort of thing you would say of a student recovering
after an orgy.
Meanwhile a coterie of birds had settled in a tree near
my window, and one of them, which at first I thought was
a bullfinch, but it was not, used daily to waken me with
this little theme (on which I afterwards worked many
contrapuntal exercises in England) :
For a moment I had feared this illness might furnish my
father with an excuse for opposing my return to Leipzig
later on, but that dread was dispelled by a sentence in a
dear letter from mother. ' Of course, darling/ she wrote,
206 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
' you shall go back ; I told Papa it would kill you not to/
This was the sort of thing that made me adore her so.
Eventually I started for home about the middle of June
in the charge of a girl I had made friends with, Nancy
Crawfurd by name (now Mrs. Gould Ross), whom Lisl once
referred to as ' that nice girl with the kind nose/ and who
actually put off her own journey home till I was fit to
travel, having promised my new mother to deliver me
safely into the hands of the real one.
And now, at the outset of a relation which governed
my life both humanly and musically for so many years,
I should like to say in what medium this part of my memoirs
is steeped — say it once for all, not to touch on the subject
again till a certain date seven years later has been reached.
I have said we were to be violently separated by Fate ;
when that separation became final I put away all the letters
from her I possessed and never thought my eyes would
rest on them again. In 1892, a few months after her sudden
death, a parcel arrived through a mutual friend, inscribed
on the inner covering in her husband's well-known hand :
' Ethel's letters to Lisl/ This parcel I never even opened,
but laid it, as in a vault, beside the other in an old tin
despatch-box of my father's, on which are painted his
styles and titles as lieutenant in the East India Company's
service — a box nearly ninety years old !
When, a few weeks ago, it occurred to me by way of a
pastime to write these memoirs, I meant to stop at the
moment of my flight to Germany — chiefly because I shrank
from opening that vault. The resolution taken, for many
days I was in a dream, staring at the tragedy with the
dazed, uncomprehending eyes of thirty-three years ago,
astounded at the richness and beauty of that long tender
friendship — wondering, with the old, dull bewilderment,
how such things can come to an end. Only by degrees
did it seem possible to fix my eyes on the happiest years
of my early life and let them tell their story as they were
lived — without a thought of what was to follow.
ELISABETH VON HERZOGENBERG ("LiSL")
in Fancy Dress, 1877.
APPENDIX II
(PP. 2O7 TO 249)
PAGE
(a) LETTERS FROM MYSELF TO MY MOTHER AND
OTHER MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY, 1877-1878 . 207
(b) LETTERS FROM ELISABETH VON HERZOGENBERG
•(' LISL '), MAY 27 TO JUNE 9, 1878 . . 244
w
FROM MYSELF TO MY MOTHER AND OTHER MEMBERS
OF THE FAMILY, 1877-1878.
[Note. — / found the following letters among my Mother's
papers, and such is the enthusiasm they radiate that I hope
I may be pardoned for printing them with all their youthful
redundancies on their head — (a temptation to tone down the
slanginess of the style having been resisted with some difficulty).
It must be remembered that those at home were waiting to hear
whether my claim to having a vocation was illusory or not,
so no wonder I nearly went off my head with joy at the
encouragement I met with, and eagerly reported it.
I lit on these letters some time after the corresponding part
of the main text had been written, consequently a few incidents
are described twice over — the only time this will happen in
these pages. But I think it may amuse other memoir-writers
beside myself to compare the two versions — separated by an
interval of forty years /]
Rotterdam : July 27, 1877.
My own darling Mother, — Here we are, safe and sound,
after a most successful journey, with all our luggage so far
207
208 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
intact and our persons washed and in order. . . . Well,
once at Harwich we were the first people out of the train
and the first on board the steamer, thus getting the pick
of the berths. We sat up on deck until one o'clock and
anything more beautiful than the night you cannot imagine,
a very calm sea and brilliant moonlight. As we left the
breakwater behind we passed close to a bell buoy which
tolled in the most eerie and dismal manner imaginable.
I slept like a top till the stewardess called me just as we
were entering the river. We were on it about an hour and
a half, passing through quite the ugliest country I ever set
eyes on, as flat as a board and nothing but bulrushes and
poplar avenues leading apparently nowhere and planted
apparently apropos of nothing in particular. The little
villages are like toy villages and look as if painted afresh
every morning, and the windmills are absolutely bewildering
and all the colours of the rainbow.
My billy-cock seemed to create great excitement and
interest among the Dutch sailors, as indeed among some
dirty boys in St. James's Park, one of whom informed me
that I had got his father's hat on. At present I am writing
in the coffee-room, and the dialect sounds like German
baby-language. There are plenty of asphalt patches about
the town, and Harry and I are thinking of extemporising
a net with a table cloth, marking out a court, and
commencing a game of lawn-tennis. . . . We go on straight
to-night, stopping nowhere, and arriving at Leipzig about
eight to-morrow morning. We then repair to a hotel,
wash, dress, etc., and go on to the Friedlanders. I shall
in all probability write from there again to-morrow. I
cannot realise that I am off one bit, and I did not dare
talk about it yesterday for fear of realising it too much.
Good-bye, my darling Mother. My dear love to all,
and I do hope Nina and Violet are playing lawn-tennis
a good deal . . . and sitting up I
Your most loving child.
Leipzig 1 1 July 28, 1877.
Something Hotel (Didn't catch the name).
... All ideas are flown and I am mentally wallowing
in one thought and one only, i.e., here I am, and I have
only just begun to realise that fact. You know we came
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 209
straight through, and both slept like tops. The carriage
was too full to admit of lying down, and yet I did not even
feel stiff, nor I believe does Harry, who will probably speak
for himself ere I close this. . . . Harry and I on our arrival
made elaborate toilettes and sat down with zest to Kaffee
and Broedchen, though we had gone through the same
performance at half-past five this morning at Magdeburg,
and I have just come in from a prowl about town. Of
course I at once repaired to the Conservatorium and
gazed at that most gloomy edifice with feelings easier to
imagine than to describe, though somewhat modified by
the fact that we were not quite sure which of seven or
eight gloomy edifices in the block was actually the Con-
servatorium, as the latter adjoins the University and
is much the same style of building. There were a good
many students strolling about, with very festive caps and
less festive, not to say stodgy, casts of countenance. Most
of them wear spectacles, all wear trousers that bag at
the knee, and not a few are decorated with intersecting
cuts on their faces — these latter swagger a good deal.
We then repaired to the public gardens where I saw what
my eyes had often pictured — the masses of chairs, and in
the midst the raised orchestra with desks all round. I see
' Egmont ' is to be played to-night at the theatre ; I wonder
if we shall go. Harry thinks it is time to go to Place de
Repos, so I close this for the present. . . .
(3)
To ALICE DAVIDSON
Place de Repos, Treppe G., Leipzig : July 30, 1877.
. . . The sort of life I at present lead is this : I get
called at half-past six or seven, get up leisurely and ask
for my breakfast, which goes by the name of 'Kaffee/
Each person has their own little tray, coffee-pot, plate of
rolls, pat of butter, etc. You can have an egg if you like,
but I don't. You have this meal in your own room, or
else in the sitting-room quite promiscuously and independent
of anyone else. There are beautiful public baths close by,
and after your coffee you repair to the baths. I mean to
learn to swim by-and-bye. I then write and read and
VOL. I. P
210 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
practise ; dinner is at one, and consists of hot meat, always
plainly and well cooked, generally meat cutlets or slices
off the joint. Seldom the joint. Or else you have little
wee chickens cut up into four bits and roasted in dripping
(not gravy). The salads are truly wonderful, all sorts of
vegetables cooked up cold in grease and vinegar, with
little dabs of forced meat and bread dumplings scattered
about it. Then one has cucumber, and yellow beans as
hard as nails and very sour. Then comes the inevitable
' Mehlspeise/ a sort of sodden but well-mixed pie-crust
stuffed with some plums or sweet cherries in between —
the sort of thing Papa would like the children and himself
to live on. Then rolls (my pet ' Franzbrodchen ' and
others) and butter appear, and sometimes fresh fruit.
After dinner the Frau Professor goes to sleep, I fancy, and
about 3.30 or 4 we go in the garden and drink milk fresh
from the cow and coffee and rolls, playing cards or reading.
Whist is a favourite game, and Frau Professor, Thekla,1
Mr. B., and I are to play in an hour or so. There is a
forest about five minutes from here which is ten miles
through, and therein is a little ' Restoration/ as they call
them, where a glorious orchestra plays Mondays and
Fridays.
You would be astonished at the cheapness of every-
thing here. Theatre tickets are is. 6d., and this morning
I bought all that the soul of woman can desire in the shape
of writing-paper, envelopes, steel pens, black and white
cottons, ink, boot-laces, etc. for about is. 3 Jd. Little things
are less than one-third of the English prices and of course
one is able to go continually to the Opera ; yesterday
we went to hear ' Lohengrin ' and this evening are
going to hear ' Aida ' ! Harry comes back to-morrow
and leaves for Scotland on Thursday I think ; as you
know he's in Dresden at present ... he was so dear
travelling. , . .
Perhaps Mother would like to see this letter so do send
it to Frimhurst and write soon, darling. On second thoughts
send it first to dear old Mary to whom I shan't write till
I have something to tell. . . .
1 Fr§,ulein Friedlander
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 211
(4)
Friedrichsroda, Thuringen : August y.
My darling Mother, — As I mean Sunday to be my day
for writing home, I herewith inaugurate that festival, sitting
at Q^o'clock in a little arbour in a little garden in a little
town in a little mountainous province called Thuringen.
We came here yesterday quite en masse, Frau Friedlander,
Thekla, Marie, and the two Scotch girls who live with the
Friedlanders, called Binning. Gustchen (Fraulein Redeker)
comes on Wednesday. We were met at the station by the
great baritone of whom you have heard me speak, and of
whom Jenny Lind says he is the finest artist she has ever
heard since Stockhausen — Herr Henschel. As he always
sang in London with my two, they are all great friends,
and we shall simply have the loveliest music to be had
anywhere all the two or three weeks we are here, for Herr
Henschel was brought up to be a pianist and plays
splendidly. He is a regular genius, and his compositions
are lovely. I hear he draws most beautifully, but shall
soon see for myself, as at 10 o'clock we are going up there
(he is staying with a Herr von Milde half-way up the
mountains) to do music. It is too delicious ! The manners
and customs are too funny. We live in a little villa, the
whole of which would go into the hall at home, and in the
cellar live four cows. On Sundays they are let out into
the fields. You hear ever so far off a horn, very fairly
played, and presently a man appears, playing it all about
the town, at which signal all the cows tramp forth with a
most bewildered air and are driven away.
German beds, till you get accustomed to them, are
not very comfortable. To begin with, they are of wood
and about the size of an ordinary crib. The mattress is
fixed in, and over that a sheet, exactly the breadth of
the bed and a little longer, is laid ; on the top of you is
a sort of pancake consisting of two sheets sewn together
with bits of flannel between, the same size as the under-
sheet, so that even were the mattress not glued to the
bed, tucking up is an impossibility. If you are not a
quiet sleeper, which I now am, all the things are naturally
kicked on to the floor in no time. In the winter you have
a feather-bed on top of you, which you wrap round you d
212 IMPRESSIONS THAT JREMAINED
la martial cloak. And, oh, the butter and cream and Franz-
brodchen and fruit and pure cold air ! I shall have to
wear a jersey here, so cold is it, and my appetite is perfectly
alarming. We went on Thursday last to Halle where
Thekla and Gustchen had to sing in one of the many Church
concerts given here. I did not care about the two first
things much, Mendelssohn's ' Lauda Sion ' and a Cantata
of Bach's. But the last thing, Mendelssohn's ' Forty-second
Psalm/ in which the two had a long duet, was quite lovely.
That reminds me not to forget to tell you that before
we left Leipzig I went to hear Verdi's new Opera ' Aida '
(in which Patti plays in London). You know the scene
is laid in Egypt, and one of the kings comes in with his
victorious army, carrying trophies, i.e. dogs, cats, storks,
frogs, and heaven knows what else, on the ends of long
sticks. On anything being said of which the army approves,
all the sticks are waved frantically in the air and the beasts
get mixed up. How I laughed ! Why will they be so
realistic ?
Yesterday we stopped at Weimar and went to see
Schiller's and Goethe's houses, and then their coffins. It
was awfully interesting. Everyone is so fond of ' Rothraut.'
I am going to print it and the five others, and sell them if
I can. . . .
Thank you, my darling mother, over and over again
for your dear, newsy letter. I am more than happy. Harry
will have told you how completely and utterly at home I
am here, and I think we are all really fond of each other.
The German life suits me so wonderfully, everything, eating,
drinking, manners, etc. Frau Professor says I am as if I
had been here six months at least, and I feel as if I had been
here for years. In this musical country, strange to say,
my music goes farther than in unmusical England, and my
accompanying and singing at sight are made much use of.
Darling mother, indeed I will tell you everything, whether
I am ill or well, happy, or, what is impossible, unhappy.
I can't help feeling glad to think I am missed. . . .
B. is really a nice boy. You can't think how good-
natured he is to me, and if I allowed it would give me the
very coat oft his back. Old Frau F. I like the least of the
party ; she strikes me as an awful old humbug, always
' Mein liebstes theuerstes Fraeulein ' and such grimaces
and posing. I don't think the Binnings love her. They
say she is very kind and so on, but very slithery. To old
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 213
Frau Professor I am quite devoted, such a plain-sailing,
simple, straightforward old thing.
. . . These German pens drive me wild. Could you in
your next letter send me a couple of ' J ' pens, and in the
next two more, and so on, as I can get no decent nibs in
Germany. Dearest love to the children and best thanks
for their dear letters. I am so glad Miss Periwig makes
them sit up, and hope their lawn-tennis will prosper when
the heat is less intense. . . I
(5) <• • S
Friedrichsroda : August 12, 1877.
. . . Henschel is only 27, but he is gradually making
a name for himself, and musicians take on an average
40 years to do this. One day when I was out of the room
Thekla told him I composed, and on my return he asked
me (as he afterwards confessed as a matter of politeness
and with no expectations) to see something I had done.
I produced a song — we have no piano, but of course he
reads it through like a book. Mother ! he said such things
of my talent ! Things I never even dreamed of. He said
it was simply wonderful, and could not believe I had had
no tuition. Of course he found faults, and afterwards
told a friend of his whom I know that they were faults
arising from talent. In the afternoon we went to the von
Mildes. He is the first man in the Berlin Opera, old now,
but a great musician with a voice like a god, and his wife
is also very musical. Of course Henschel was there and
several other musicians, and I was asked to sing some things
of mine. Mother ! I wish you had been there. They
were astonished, they all came round and said it was
' merkwuerdig, wundervoll/ and all the afternoon, when
Henschel was strumming, as he only can strum, between
the songs, he kept on coming back to the modulation at
' Schweig' still, mein Herz ' in ' Rothraut ' which pleased
him hugely. Afterwards, when we were all supping, our
host proposed the health of the artists and coupled with
it the name of ' one who has but lately come among us and
whom we hope to keep/ and once again I was feted, and oh
I wish you had been there ! The bliss of knowing that
when I went on so about cultivating my talent I was not
wrong ! For though I felt it myself, I sometimes doubted
whether it was only for a woman, and an Englishwoman
214 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
living in a not musical circle, that I was anything particular
in music — whether such talent as I have deserved to have
everything else put aside for it. And now I know it does
deserve it ! The greatest musical genius I know has seen
my work and so to speak has given it his blessing, and it
is well with me . . . !
Don't think, mother darling, that this makes me lose
my head, that I fancy I have only to put pen to paper
and become famous. It is just this : men who have lived
among musicians all their lives, who have been hand in
glove with Schumann and Mendelssohn, and are so with
Brahms and Rubenstein, say they seldom saw such talent,
in a woman never, and I can but tell you all this. I know
though that years and years, perhaps, of hard work are
before me, years in which little or nothing I do shall be
printed — this I have resolved on — and in which I shall be
nobody, and at the end of which is perhaps a laurel crown
awaiting me in the shape of a name ! But the end is worth
the uphill struggle, and if application and hard steady work
can do anything I ought to get it.
I go up every day into the mountain and compose.
Then to the vonMildes I go a good deal, and am very welcome
I think — so it seems ! Then we go up to the meadows and
play croquet, and then up to where Henschel lives and
sing, sing, sing ! Oh, those three ! Thekla is not in good
voice, but Meine Koenigin, alias Fraeulein Redeker, is in
first-rate voice, and the music we have simply defies
description. She is at this moment wandering about in
a pink dressing-gown singing Scenas out of an opera of
Rubinstein's, and it is rather distracting.
*- to
Do you know she sings from ¥$ J 1
i
It is a glorious voice and won't be kept in. She is
literally bubbling over with singing. Yesterday all four
of them sang for a charity in the church, but I never do
care for sacred music except, oh ! I must except, the bass
duet, ' The Lord is a Man of War/ which is certainly a
grand thing. Henschel sang it with Santley at the Handel
Festival. . . .
Please send on my accounts to Papa ! My German
gets on Ai, I always speak it, even to the Scotch girls. . . .
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 215
(6)
Friedrichsroda : August 19, 1877,'
. . . Fancy, staying in the house with Henschel is
your old Wildbad friend, Herr von Roumanim ; he raves
about Mary ! He is a pleasant man and bade me remember
him most kindly and respectfully to my Frau Mutter and
Fraeulein Schwester ! Also I was to tell you that now he
wears his hair long, not like a tooth-brush, as when you
knew him.
I have had several talks with Henschel about my music
and am most awfully happy about it. He thinks more
of my talent than ever I did ! and has written about me
to Brahms with whom he was almost brought up, and to
Simrock, the publisher. It is so glorious to be told by
competent persons that one's future lies in one's own hands,
that the material for realising hopes I hardly ever — I
think never — breathed at home even, is there ; and I have
but to work hard and steadily and then not be too soon
pleased with myself. Every day I become more and more
convinced of the truth of my old axiom, that why no women
have become composers is because they have married, and
then, very properly, made their husbands and children the
first consideration. So even if I were to fall desperately
in love with BRAHMS and he were to propose to me, I
should say no ! So fear not that I shall marry in Germany !
I told Henschel my opinion, and he said perhaps I was
right, but as he himself has, I am told, an ' unglueckliche
Liebe ' 1 on hand, I don't think he is a judge ! He is so
good to me, corrects my songs for me (I have composed
lots more), sets me basses on which to construct chorales
and all sorts of things ; and yet I know if I were Henschel
it would be a great pleasure to me to get hold of a new
pupil to give a friendly shove-on to during a three weeks'
do-nothing stay in a little primitive town. ... I am, as
always, very, very happy and oh so well. . . .
(7)
Leipzig ; August 22, 1877.
. . . Your dear letters are so very welcome ; I think
of you I don't know how many times in the day, and like
1 Unfortunate attachment.
216 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
to think that if your third daughter is giving you a great
deal of trouble, the time may come when you will be proud
of her. Do you remember I told you I should be just as
all the rest in the Conservatorium, that we were treated
like prisoners, known only by our numbers so to speak ?
Well, it is so, but here am I, not yet entered and yet known
to the first masters ! Is not that something to be pleased
at ! ... I heard ' Euryanthe ' the other day and was
much bored. I do not rave over Weber, but have not yet
heard ' Freischuetz.' ... I do hope Papa will send me
some money soon. I know you will be pleased to hear that
for want of time I must give up violin and devote myself
to piano. . . .
Mother darling, as I always wanted to learn to swim,
and as when once you do swim, swimming baths are much
cheaper than others, I have begun learning it. The whole
course of teaching costs 95. however long it lasts, and then
35. tip to the teacher. You can then bathe every day
for 35. gd. a quarter, whereas in the other baths bathing
twice a week costs nearly £i a quarter. So in the end it
is cheaper. If, however, you think this unnecessary I have
still enough of the £5 papa gave me on my departure to
pay for it, so please, mother darling, tell me what you
think.
There seems every prospect of Mr. Ewing coming here
for a few days in November or December ; I wish she
could come too. . . . Maas has set me a sonata to write ! ! !
I have done the first three movements, and very ugly two
are.
(8)
September 9, 1877.
. . . The swimming is going on famously. On the
third day I was in a great fright as a certain Frau Doktor
who began with me could do it better than I, and as you
know, owing to my muscularity, I generally do athletic
sports better than most women. However, on the fourth
day I balanced myself on the end of a sofa while Frau
Professor, who is not small, sat at the other end, and
flourished arms and legs to such advantage that the next
day I swam, with a cord, all round the bath several times,
and the Frau Doktor was plunging about like a porpoise,
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 217
swallowing pails of water, and leaving nothing to be seen
above water but an agitated pair of heels going like a
semaphore. Now I have beaten her all to smash, and
small credit to me, as she is about 150, I should think, and
goes about on dry land in a muslin cap with sort of butter-
fly bows in yellowish-red. I discovered to my intense
astonishment that she lives in this very house, is in fact
Herr Maas's landlady. One day when I went for my
lesson I heard her scuttling down the passage and the
banging of a door half-way up the same, so being versed
in the ways of the Fatherland I stood still and waited, and
sure enough out comes the head, yellow bows and all, is
half withdrawn, and then I am recognised, and out dashes
the Frau Doktor in Schlafrock and curl-papers, and you
can imagine what an affecting meeting we had. . . .
I send you a photograph of myself that I had done for
fun with my hair down ; the rude Henschel said : ' Sehr
huebsch als Bild, auch als Photographic, aber Sie muessen
mir zugeben dass Sie nicht so huebsch sind ! ' 1 I told him
he had never seen me with my hair down and that that
made all the difference ! !
There are two or three things in Germans that I should
like to alter ; as regards men, that they smoke the vilest
cigarettes and spit so recklessly. As regards the women,
they have got it into their heads that the fashionable and
chic thing to do is to scratch all their hair up on the ' bend
of the head ' I used to talk so much about, and then plant
a very fly-away hat at the extreme back of the erection.
You would scream at the fashions and the attempts at
something very killing, particularly in the theatre. As
regards both sexes, I wish one could impress upon them
that it is possible to walk in the town without banging
against every soul you meet. I can't describe to you how
unmannerly everyone is, bar the students, in this respect.
At first I made way for people and fancied that everyone
I met was in a great hurry and must be excused. But
finding that my whole walk became a perpetual hopping on
and off the pavement, like a canary between two perches,
I resolved to do in Rome as the Romans do ; since then,
thanks to the muscular development of which I am so
proud and to which I now give full play, I have most
exhilarating walks. . . ./<
1 Very pretty as picture, but you must admit you are not as pretty
as that!
218 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
How splendidly the Russians are doing, but the Turks,
too, are doing wonders. Perhaps this war will raise the
tone in Turkey supposing Turkey wins, but then it is the
tone of the upper classes in Turkey that wants raising, and
war won't affect them so much as the people. . . . Poor
France ! But how like the French to quarrel over Thiers'
body and come to blows over the funeral ! ... I am going
to-day to hear ' Tannhaeuser ' ; it will be most interesting
after seeing the Wartburg with my own eyes. On Tuesday
and Thursday GREAT TREATS are in store for me, for I am to
hear ' Don Giovanni ' (in German ) and ' II Flauto Magico '
for the first time! The other day I saw the great Marie
Geistinger in Schiller's 'Maria Stuart/ The Geistinger
was such a Maria as one dreams of. She is very, very
beautiful, and, oh, how she acts ! I always wept when I
read that play ; even the stony, tearless Mary wept at Miss
D 's, I remember, when we read it ! So you may
imagine how I howled in the theatre ! Geistinger's voice
is so wonderful — deep and thrilling — and she has more
jewels they say than Patti. In one piece she plays in next
week she wears them all nearly. She is equally good in
comedy, but then there are many first-rate comedy players,
and I don't think many can play tragedy like the Geistinger.
She is a Baroness by birth and by marriage, and became
an actress — a veal actress, not a Lady Sebright — from sheer
love of it, and her husband stands in the wings ! I am
sure to meet her at the Brockhauses. They are great
people here, have a splendid house, and hold court of all
the talent of the stage and studio in the town. Thanks,
thanks, thanks for the ' J ' pens. . . .
(9)
Place de Repos, Treppe G. Ill} Leipzig : September 16, 1877.
. . . Haven't the French a delicious expression about
people wearing ' ribbons/ for instance, ' that swear ' ?
I often think of that when I see a Teuton arrayed in her
Sunday best, strolling — no, German ladies can't stroll —
either jigging or stalking down the Promenade. I am going
to-night to see Marie Geistinger in ' Adrienne Lecouvreur/
translated into German of course. I daresay you know
the piece. Adrienne was one of Rachel's great parts — and
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 219
from what I've read of Rachel I should think the Geistinger
could do all Rachel's roles. I nearly had a fit to-day on
hearing she is nearly 50 ! ! ! ! She has the movements,
figure, and voice of a girl ! Of her face one can of course
not judge ; and this wonderful creature is here for four
years ! It is very delightful. . . .
I am a little behindhand with my work this week and
must make up before Wednesday. I am so glad Violet
can do back-handed half-volleys. She should practise
against the house, and tell her that I don't mean that she
and Nina shall beat me when I come ! Darling Mother —
the picture that always hangs on the wall of my memory
is summer, and home again ! I must be very careful of
£ s. d. — and if at the last minute it should be found
better for me not to come home, I will not grumble. But
it is a long time hence ! . . . Local news interests me
immensely ! More ' J ' pens !!!...
(10)
September 23, 1877.
... It is (or has been) freezing here, and yesterday
for the first time I started the stove ! As you know, there
are no fireplaces in Germany. I was horribly frightened
of it, for when first lit it groans in a most alarming way, but
it is, as a matter of fact, quite harmless. The heat these
stoves throw out is enormous, and the room warms in about
five minutes as completely as if there had been a fire there
all day ; but the nuisance is that unless you wish to be
frizzled up with heat you must put on very little coal, and
keep on so doing about every half-hour. This makes me
rather wild, but for a person living the sort of life I do here
it is much better to have a thing like a stove that acts at
once than a fire. I let out the stove (which retains its
heat all night) at 7.30 (supper- time), and it is then laid all
ready for lighting next day. In the morning I fly out of
bed at 5.30 and apply a match thereto (unlike a fire it always
burns when once lit ! !), get into bed again, set the alarum
on half an hour, and when I get up at six the room is warm
and the little pot of water I placed on the stove boiling —
so that I am sure of hot water to wash in (all Germans wash
in cold, all winter through, and this I am sure is a key to the
inadequacy of the performance ! !). . . .
22o IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
The great Sonata is finished ! ! That is, I am putting
a touch or two to the last movement (a Rondo), but by my
next lesson on Wednesday all will be ready. Maas is very
complimentary about it, and I myself am pretty well
satisfied with the latter movements — more because I feel
now I am getting into working easily in the harness of form
than because I think the Sonata itself particularly good.
Three weeks ago I never could have believed it possible
for me to launch out at once upon and bring to a satis-
factory conclusion a piano work like a Sonata, and it is
so encouraging to find a mountain melt into a mole-hill
when you commence to scale it ! The week after next is
the ' Aufnahme Pruefung/ when all the new pupils have
to enter the Conservatorium and play before the Directory —
in fact, show off ! Maas says I am to play the Sonata ! !
and as it is difficult I am now studying it with him ! This
will be a great recommendation for me at the outset of my
career within those newly whitewashed walls.
After all I am not particularly quick at swimming
nor the reverse, but about average ! Fat people learn
quickest, as they float better and have more leisure to
think about making the movements properly. Those who,
like me, have heavy bones and a thin, muscly frame, have
at first greatest difficulty in keeping afloat but make the
best swimmers in the end, and can dive, etc. , better. I enjoy
the Schwimm-Bassin immensely. The other day I came
rather early — the gentlemen were not yet out — so I sat in
the lobby and chatted with the swimming mistress and
her two daughters, and said it was a great pity they had
no piano there (in Germany you always find a well-tuned
piano in all waiting-rooms and restaurants, etc.). At this
moment in came a tall woman in black, who owns the
whole ' Sophienbad ' and hearing my remark entreated me
to come upstairs and play on her piano. So I did, and sang
away like fun. They were enchanted of course ! ! ! ' and
begged me to be ' too early ' as often as possible. . . .
O Mother ! now that the cold weather is coming I some-
times get a sort of sick feeling — ' Hunting ' ! ! — But one
can't have everything, and if you have got what is best in
life you can't expect to have what is second-best as well !
Rubinstein comes in November, also Schumann. Krebs
next month ! ! Joachim also ! Glory ! . . .
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 221
(ii)
To NINA SMYTH
Tuesday evening, October 9.
. . . First I must tell you a proud moment is drawing
near for me ! In the Conservatorium you must have cards,
as almost every interview with the ' heads ' must be prefaced
by a sending up of your card. This is natural, as people
of all nations are at the Conservatorium, and the names
of 300 pupils are not easy to learn off by heart. My dear —
there are two real live mulattos and one nigger here !
The negress (for she is of the ' fair ' sex) is by way of being
a great dresser. Nature manages her hair of course (and
I'm sure no art could manage it), but she affections long
gold ear-rings and most skittish bonnets, and wears gloves
on all occasions. I suppose she forgets her face, and thinks
that then no one'll see her hands. Then we've got a
Norwegian with a red cap and tassel who parades about in
a cassock and altogether is not unlike Uncle Charles ; and
three fire-worshippers who wear chimney-pot hats with no
brims (sort of busbies made of top-hat material) and flowing
robes hke Papa's military cape, only more so. But I am
wandering from my subject — I meant to show it was not
unbridled vanity, nor reckless expenditure on my part,
that caused me to order — 100 visiting cards for is. $d. with
my name and address ! ! ! ! If ever there was a peacock
I am that peacock, almost as grand as you will be when
you can read writing. ... I'm going to send home such
a sausage to Mama by Mr. Ewing — it's like the most
beautifully delicate forced meat you ever tasted. Mary
would eat a whole one at a sitting I fancy. ... I don't
think I ever appreciated the necessity of temporary spinster-
hood (at any rate, if not total) to certain kinds of lives, till
I came here ! ! You may rely upon that and fear no
brother-in-law. . . .
P.5. — I fear there's no chance of the contingency Violet
suggests — that I should tire of Leipzig and come home
before my year !
(12)
To MY MOTHER
October 26 (approx.), 1877.
... It was so funny this morning — I had been dreaming
that I was at home and showing you the new hat I have
222 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
bought, and you were saying : ' Well, it looks a great deal
better on the head than in the hand ' ! ! when I awoke.
I have so often dreamed at home that I was in Leipzig, that
this morning, before I knew where I was, I found myself
feeling the wall and staring round the room to see if I was
in my bed at home or here. I saw that the wall was brown
and said to myself ' then I must be in Leipzig/ and dozed
off again. In fact often now I wonder if I shan't * come to
myself ' in my bed at home and find I've had a fever or
something, like people in books ! ! The work over that
counterpoint told on me a little — tho' the only symptoms
are generally sleepiness and disinclination to compose.
Of course I took that latter very easily, as often at home
I felt ' is it possible that I, who to-day feel like a doll with
a mashed turnip for a brain, ever composed ? ' The
inclination always comes again and en effet returned to
me yesterday when I got on a bit with my new ' Geistinger
Sonata ' and wrote a song. (The first sonata is dedicated
of course to you, Mother darling.)
The story of the Geistinger Sonata is indeed a queer
one — it was begun last Sunday. I had already begun to
feel ' verstimmt ' and unimaginative — when . . .
[Here follows an account of my calling on the Geistinger
as described in the text, but of course the slight feeling of
disillusionment is not mentioned.']
. . . You can imagine the effect of this visit ! I
came home, felt another creature, and forthwith composed
I think the best thing I have yet done — the skeleton of a
' first movement ' of a new sonata. It is really programme
music, though no one would know it ! I have the whole
scene there— going up the stairs, the ' Herzklopfen ' at the
door, and all ! ! When it is finished I have secured the
services of the best player in the Conservatorium to play
it at the Abendunterhaltung. But that may be ages
hence. I haven't filled up the first movement yet and don't
feel at all in a ' sonata ' mood at present. I shall show it
to Reinecke next Thursday.
The counterpoint master is always urging me to make
the acquaintance of some girl who sings well, and get her
to sing some of my songs in the Abendunterhaltung. I
always put it off but must see about it this week. It's
rather a horrid thing to have to do, but as everyone does
it I may as well ! . . . I could not read all of your last
letter ! ! The ink was bad.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 223
October 1877;
. . . Ever so many thanks for your letter, but do you
know, Mother darling, it took me more than 20 minutes
to read it and almost half a page is still a mystery to me.
Do ask Papa to give that horrid cheap blue paper to the
children, who write with spider-leg pens, and whose letters
are almost readable even when written on that paper.
But you write large and black, and it's utterly impossible
to make out half your letters unless you wrote on only
one side of the paper, and in the end that would be false
economy. When Aunt Judy wrote to me from Frimhurst
she had to write so, as her hand is also very black. If you
write on blue Frimhurst paper, I only get such a short
letter, and as one depends a good deal upon letters from
home surely he could get some other paper ? You see I
am rather sore on this subject ! ! as I have already sent
two fruitless appeals to Papa !!!...
Last night at the Chamber Music (do you remember at
Aunt Louisa's that day our discussion about the ' Chamber
pieces ' !) Saint-Saens, the great French composer, who
besides that is the greatest player I ever heard, bar Rubin-
stein (though probably he is not so many-sided if one
knew him as well), played — and was called back nine
times — and played two encores at the end of all things for
the benefit of the Conservatorists, who went utterly wild
over him, and (when he was here a month ago) sent him
a testimonial ! ! When Saint-Saens drove away, such a
row you never heard. They wanted to take the horses
out, and drag him home — luckily for him however (as he
was undoubtedly hungry) his coachman drove on at the
first cry of ' Spannt die Pferde ab ! ! ' * (While I have
been sitting writing this letter at my window, which looks
out on the Promenade about 100 yards away, I've seen
three dwarfs go by ! ! ! This will give you an idea of the
number in Germany. It's horrid.) . . .
(14)
November/ 1877.
. . . Poor Professor Brockhaus (brother of my friend)
has died of that horrible disease ' trichinosis/ caused by
1 Take out the horses.
224 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
the existence of little animals in pigs — which (when the
diseased pigs are made into a particular kind of sausage,
eaten almost raw) remain alive in the sausage and eat up
the inside of the poor person who has taken that particular
sort. With the Professor they settled in the lungs and
behind his eyes, so that he first became blind and then
died a most painful death. There have been but two
instances of death from trichinosis — which is not generally
dangerous — but lots of people are ill. Luckily I hate
that sort of Wurst, and only tasted it once about three
months ago, at which time the pigs weren't infected.
Now, no Schweinefleisch is eaten in Leipzig — we might
be Israelites ! . . .
(15)
December, 1877.
. . . Now that the winter is coming on I go a great deal
in Gesellschaft, and find that far from making me dis-
inclined to work it gives one a fresh impetus thereto.
For of late I have been overworking myself a little and have
in consequence been catching it from Frau Brockhaus
and her mother-in-law ! Hearing so much music ' greift
so furchtbar an ' *• as they say here (a very pithy expression).
To these Gesellschafts one goes either in ordinary evening
dress or in a high dress — like the tussore and blue. Thus
the Ascot dress will be most useful, and as it will be worn
only by candlelight do you think the fadedness matters ?
As it is such a, to Germans, marvellous make, if you
cannot get it dyed in England without taking it to pieces,
they do them here whole very well and cheaply. Also,
Mother darling, would you send me one or two of my long
petticoats — petticoat bodices I fancy I have with me —
at the bottom of the box among my summer things. If
you can, do send the Ascot dress with the other things,
as that will come in so useful.
Towards Christmas, darling Mother, I get Heimweh2
too, and I think oh so often of home and you all. I wish
they'd be quick and set up a telephone between Farnborough
and Leipzig ! But the person who in every way tries to
fill the place of Mother to me — who interests herself for me
and gives herself more trouble on my account than I can
describe to you — who scolds me and tells me I am hope-
1 Takes a lot out of you. * Homesickness.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 225
lessly childish and inexperienced — who tells me what to
do and what not to do — and who I do believe is getting fond
of me — is Frau Eduard Brockhaus of whom I shall always
speak as ' Frau Doctor ' (her husband is a B.A.). Through
her I have an entree into all the best houses in Leipzig and
J move in the circles ' (vide Carver ley !) after a fashion
that would delight Herr Schloesser's heart ! ! But what
I prize more than anything I get through her is her friend-
ship and guardianship. I can go to her beautiful house
and sit there and talk to her whenever I have time. I tell
her everything I have been after, and whom I have seen,
and she always tells me she feels responsible for me ! I am
indeed in luck to have her for a friend.
Marie Geistinger has returned at last ! I was told by
someone who had seen her arrival in Leipzig that she
left the station in five cabs — one for herself, maid and
dog, and four others ' lauter Koffer ' ! ! 1). The extensive
Garde-robe of course ! The other day I met the Director
of the Stadt Theater and his wife (great swells) at a party,
and that's nice, for if they took a fancy to one, you meet
all sorts of interesting people there — including the Geistinger
perhaps. . . .
Thank you, Mother darling, so immensely for your
photo of Hugo — most excellent — but what I want is one
of my beauteous Mother. To-day by Frau Dr. B.'s desire
I took her all the photos I have of my family, but yours
I wouldn't take, as I do so hate to show people such a vile
likeness.
(16)
December 16, 1877.
My darling Mother, — I've got such a lot to tell you I
hardly know where to begin. (I instantly make a large
blot down below by way of prologue !) I think I shall
keep the best part — the musical — for the end and instantly
launch into the dissipations I have been indulging in.
I have told you that my dear Frau Dr. Brockhaus holds
all Conservatorists in greatest abhorrence, and I believe
she'd like me never to speak with any of them ! However,
there I strike and say one must be friendly with the girls
in one's class. Well, her great idea is that by planting me
1 Nothing but trunks.
VOL. i. Q
226 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
firmly in her society (and anyone protegeed by her is always
kindly treated) I shall escape the shoals and quicksands
of Bohemianism in the Conservatorium. So I have now
been introduced to all the swells in Leipzig — yesterday I
wound up with the Limburgers (German Consul) and
Baroness Tauchnitz, a dear very handsome old lady about
as tall as Mrs. Oswald Smith. In consequence of this
I got an invitation to the ' Professorium ' — an entertain-
ment given by the Professors of the University. It consists
in the following. You dress yourself as for a small dance
in England (I had to put on my black, and Indian scarf, as
the floor was said to be dirty and I didn't want to spoil
my green silk). The proper thing is for all young girls
to go in white, and (bones, red elbows and all) ' ausge-
schnitten.' x Frau Dr. wanted me to do so, but I rebelled
and said I couldn't turn German all at once, and that people
would say on seeing my black gown (quite unheard-of
for girls here !) ' Eine Englaenderin ' and pass on. Well,
first of all you enter the ball-room and find it filled with
rows of chairs arranged in circles — and at the one end a little
dais and thereon a table. When all have arrived, one of
the Professors mounts the dais and delivers an address —
sometimes long and stupid — sometimes (then for instance)
short and sweet. After this is over a scene of the wildest
confusion ensues, for suddenly — apparently from the bowels
of the earth, like the demons in the last act of ' Don
Giovanni ' — the room is filled with waiters bearing long
tables with which they clear the course, and then follows
supper. It consists chiefly in waiting for the next course,
but is pleasant on the whole. When this is over the rooms
are cleared again and dancing begins. Everything is
managed by an omnipotent ' M.C.' and the dance opens
with a Polonaise, i.e. a long procession is formed two and
two, and then off we go round and round the room, describing
all manner of curious evolutions like a big sea-serpent.
The Polonaise lasts till the band has had enough of it —
and then comes a Valse.
Oh, Mother, I could weep over the waltzing ! Any one
of my partners would have been turned out of an English
ball-room as dangerous. You know how I like to dance —
very, very slowly and quietly, in perfect time, beginning
at the beginning of the dance, and going on to the end
without turning a hair ! ! Well, imagine me seized upon
1 Decolletee.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 227
and whirled round the room, often on the floor, often in
mid-air, never at a less rate than 16 miles an hour. Your
partner hops nearly up to the ceiling and unless you want
all your teeth knocked out you must hop too. No sooner
have you pantingly implored to stop a minute than up
comes another gentleman and begs for an ' extra tour/
Off you fly again, once round the room, and are delivered
over to your original partner who whirls you off again with-
out further delay. If another couple cross the course you
promptly send them spinning out of the way (how that
used to annoy me at home when any daring partner did
such a thing ; here no one minds aching shin bones, bruised
arms, and loosened teeth — I declare mine felt quite loose
at the end of the ball). Everyone bangs, pushes, hops,
kicks, and jumps with all the good humour in the world
and the rather elderly professors are quite as game as
the students. Well, after the valse come quadrilles
(something like ours), Tyroliennes (sort of Mazurka — where
to hop up to the clouds is the thing), galops (where to shoot
along the room straightforward as if you were skating is
the thing), and polkas (where to behave as much like a
dangerous lunatic as possible is the thing) ; also two or
three ' eingeschobene ' or extra valses are danced. You
may ask, did I not collapse completely before the ball
was over ? — particularly when I tell you that there is no
refreshment table and that it is only with great difficulty
that you can procure a glass of raspberry vinegar (which I
abhor ! ). I should certainly have collapsed did not my
nationality come to my aid. It is quite unusual to sit
and rest between the dances. Directly the dance is over
your partner conducts you back to your chaperone, and at
that instant up comes your next partner and claims you.
You then walk about for perhaps ten minutes, no idea of
sitting. The theory is that sitting makes you so tired !
I pleaded however that in England it was the custom, and
that I should have to be borne home on a stretcher if I
didn't sit ! Next day I was utterly helpless, so was Mrs.
Forster.
Have I spoken to you about the Forsters ? . . . a
young couple who are here for two years. She is a daughter
of the celebrated Mrs. Benyon, chere amie of Robert
Browning (I pointed both out to you that night in Tenterden
Street, when Browning got in such a rage with the man
who pushed). Mrs. Forster I often saw — she was there
228 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
too and has a face one doesn't forget. Her husband is
studying at the University here, and she amuses herself
at the Conservatorium. She had a letter of introduction
to Mrs. Brockhaus also, so it's very jolly. We go about
to these places a good deal together and are very fond of
each other. Mrs. Brockhaus declares that some balls are
coming to which I must go ' ausgeschnitten ' and ought
to go in white. As I have no white dress here I can't
go in white, but might have my two dresses, the black and
green, cut down low very easily — qu'est-ce que tu en dis ?
Now for the musical part ! I now have two composition
lessons during the week, and yesterday, for the first time,
I took some things to Jadassohn (whose new symphony
has just been given in the Gewandhaus with much applause).
I think I have told you there are but three girls in the
Conservatorium besides myself who compose. Well —
Jadassohn just said what Henschel and the others said. . . .
It has come round to me that he gives out that I am the
only really talented composeress he has met in his whole
life. ... I am waiting in great excitement for my box
from home. I quite forget what evening dresses I had.
If there are any in good repair — very good, for Frau B. has
eyes like a lynx — please send them, Mother darling. I
think all my ball-dresses were danced out ! . . .
(17)
December 21, 1877.
My own darling Mother, — I have written in all 12
Xmas letters ! (8 to home people !) and now as a bonne
bouche write my letter to you. Mother darling, I wish you
knew how much I am thinking of you all. I don't think
you've been out of my thoughts one hour ever since the
Xmas season came in, and as Xmas Day draws near
I feel more and more the many miles there are between
us. A very, very happy Christmas to you, Mother darling,
and a bright New Year. Your dear note, announcing the
despatch of the box, just arrived. I will tell Frau B. that
you would rather I did not go decolletee and I'm sure there'll
be no difficulty about it. The beautiful white dress will
do for Baroness Tauchnitz's grand party on the I4th. It
sounds much too good for a ball, and certainly shall not
be worn at one.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 229
I'm very busy now over a four-part chorale — any
amount of Contrapunkt therein. Reinecke himself got
quite interested in me last Thursday and set me my work
himself, and I told you what Jadassohn (with whom I now
also have composition lessons) said of me ! Fancy, I am
the only woman in the whole Conservatorium who has ever
been promoted to composition lessons from Reinecke ! !
I only lately found that out, and feel two inches taller
ever since ! !
You know, Mother darling, I am going to send my
presents at Easter by the Binnings, but I can't resist
despatching a box of the wonderful German confectionery
only to be got at Christmas. I shan't tell you what they
are (except that they are mostly ' marzipan ' or whatever
you call that stuff that tastes like the almond on wedding-
cake), but though they look too awful, fear not. They
are from the renowned Wilhelm Felsche, Hof Conditorei
in Berlin (to the German Emperor), Vienna (to the Austrian
Emperor), Dresden and Leipzig (to the Saxon King), and
so on — more renowned than Fortnum & Mason. But as
soon as you've tasted them you'll know if they are good
or not !
I've been studying the Rondo in my first Sonata (yours)
and at last have managed to master it after a fashion, as
I suppose I shall have to play something — and that's a
taking sort of thing. You will be pleased to hear that
despite my musically unorthodox tendencies the first
violin in the Gewandhaus orchestra, old Rontgen, said
' that Rondo thema is so pure and fresh, that I could
almost swear it was Mozart ' ! ! I have set my pet poem
of Shelley :
' My soul is an enchanted boat
Which like a sleeping swan doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing,' etc.
but am not satisfied with it (as is Jadassohn !). It is hard
to write up to such words.
To-morrow we shall be skating. Last night there were
20 degrees of frost and all day there have been 10 degrees,
but the German police are really too cautious. However,
everyone says this frost will last, as it came so gradually. . . .
My darling Mother, I wish, I wish I could be with you for
Xmas, but it's no good wishing what can't be, and all
230 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
the telephones in the world couldn't bring me nearer to
you than I shall be in thought all next week.
Your ever devoted child.
(18)
December 1877.
. . . Our holidays last till Wednesday next ; however
I began composing a new Sonata yesterday, and mean to
finish writing out the Geistinger Sonata to-night. Ill
never write anything in Cj minor again! The slightest
modulation, even into the next key (GJ minor) involves
no end of double sharps, and the writing out is simply
fearful ! The second movement is undoubtedly the best
thing I've done yet though Reinecke will persist in saying
the third is ' better work ' ! ! But really with skating
and Xmas week together I'm perpetually on the go.
I've been skating hard and, you will be happy to hear,
am the best lady skater in Leipzig. I never saw anything
like the women here. Very few can do the outside edge —
and as for cutting figures ! ! . . . The German gentlemen
are much struck of course, and think the English women
a more wonderful race even than they did before ! I think
somehow or other I have improved very much in my skating,
though I've not skated for the last two winters, seeing that
we've had no ice at home ! I go and practise when the
pond is empty — at 9 A.M. — and can do lots of queer things
now. . . .
... I had great fun at the Rudolf B.'s (up above the
Ed. B.'s). They had a sort of dinner at 1.30, and after
dinner we all went into the smoking-room (generally in
German houses the last of a suite of 4 or 5, so that one can
wander in and out at will) and according to student fashion
each one sang a song followed by chorus ! I had to conduct
and was given the feather broom (with which the Italian
curiosities I told you about are dusted) as baton ! After-
wards I went down quietly to the Ed. B.'s and we did
music. Both the eldest sons who are now home on leave
are very musical — respectively sing bass and tenor, and
play violin and cello. We did Haydn's trios and sang
quartettes of Mendelssohn and Schumann at sight, and
I sang with obligate accompaniment, and altogether it
was very nice. That's . what is so , nice about Germany ;
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 231
almost everyone you meet can take a part in a vocal
quartett. . . . I'm rather sorry Frau Dr. and the Forsters
don't hit it off so very well. Mrs. F. is a great dear, but a
little heavy, and wanting in a most essential point, social
talent. I mean she doesn't help to make a party go off
well, and though she enjoys herself thoroughly doesn't
manage to produce that impression ! I see Frau Dr. is a
little impatient of that particular failing as she herself
is so very much the other way. Mr. Forster is fearfully
English and finds very little here to his taste, and though
I think he tries hard to be cosmopolitan, he can't help
showing some of the ' Oh ! bother ! let's go home ! ' sort
of feeling that besets him so continually ! I'm very glad
I am of a plastic nature, as plastic natures seem to get so
much more fun out of life than stolid ones.
(19)
January 13, 1878.
. The Gewandhaus ball was grand fun, very swell.
The wife of the Castellan of the Conservatorium had charge
of the ladies' room and the respect I am now treated with
by the menials and officials in the Conservatorium is most
killing. The day after, when I ' resumed my studies/
all those I met enquired with great empressement if I had
found it agreeable ! . . .
I think Frau Dr. B. must feel me rather a responsibility,
as firstly I am English, and secondly, I suppose, in the
mere fact of the passion that brings me here, not quite
like all girls. But I take a real pleasure in pleasing
her and now she calls me ' Du ' and is very dear
altogether. . . .
. I say most unhesitatingly that German beds are
the most comfortable in the world. In the winter, if you're
a quiet sleeper, springs underneath and feathers (not too
many) on the top of you is glory. . . .
The whole river is frozen over, and we are going to
make a party and skate down to Connewitz, a village 4
or 5 miles from here — won't it be fun ? Frau B. and
other elders drive down — meet us there — and we all take
tea together at a hotel — but I doubt whether this plan will
come off, even if the frost lasts. Skating plans never do
come off somehow. ,
232 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
(20)
January 24, 1878.
... I am so much distressed that I can't go on working
away at my string quartett. My master was so pleased
with the first movement. He's been telling lots of people
about it, and there it lies, and I haven't the faintest inspira-
tion to go on with it, thanks to this seediness ! However,
inspiration is a thing that comes and goes like the wind,
and one hasn't the remotest idea when and where it will
spring up. . . . I do hope my letter to Papa reached and
that funds are en route. It will be too unpleasant to go
penniless into a new pension. My address henceforth is
Salomon St. 19. That is easy to remember ! Solomon
spelt with an ' a.'
(21)
Salomonstrasse 19 : Early February, '78.
. . I have to sing my songs everywhere (my voice is
in very good form at present, for it !). But do you know
I never felt more utterly hopelessly distrustful of myself
and ashamed of myself than I do now. I can hardly help
saying straight out in people's faces what I do say in so
many words : ' Oh yes, that's all very fine, but the question
is, will my talent stand cultivation ? ' Years only can
prove that question, for till one is through one's studies
and has all one's material there, one cannot tell if one
has profited by those studies and can use and shape that
material. . . . I am sorry about the ferns ! I can so well
imagine how you went into the porch, with your long
Schleppe1 sweeping into the small pools of water that
always were there in the morning, and discovered that the
ferns were dead ! But I do hope they will revive. . . .
Has Papa told Curtis to sit up straight on the box and
to drive less like the ratcatcher ! ! ! I do hope his gout is
better.
1 Train.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 233
(22)
Late in February, '78.
... I waited till to-day to write to you for I wanted
to tell you about last night. I was invited to a dinner
party at one of the standard Leipzig houses (Brockhaus,
Frege, Limburger, Tauchnitz and Lampe) on purpose to
meet Mendelssohn's daughter, Frau Prof. Wach, who, it
was prophesied, would take a great deal of interest in
me. She is one of the sweetest, most charming little women
I ever saw, very pretty and gentle, and has just that charm
of manner that made her father so beloved. She is very
like him in face — and also exactly like someone we know
very well, but I can't think whom. I sang about 12 songs
of my own ! one after the other and got more petting even
than usual ! ! for the whole company was musical and glad
to welcome a new ' Collegin.' Frau Wach was too nice
and begged me to come and see her as soon as ever I could,
so did some people I've been dying to know for ages but
hadn't met before. Brahms stayed with them when he
was here. Their name is von Herzogenberg. She is quite
lovely — a great musician — very learned — a daughter of
the Hanoverian Minister in Berlin, Baron Stockhausen.
The Tauchnitz were also there, and the Limburgers, with
whom I have lately become very intimate — and where
probably my string quartett will be played, if it is finished,
before Easter. . . .
The children of this house are very ill brought up, and
the second day of my arrival the second, aged four, whose
perseverance and straight eye cannot be too highly
commended, threw a reel of cotton, half a roll, and the
handle of a earthenware teapot, one after the other, at my
head, despite vehement remonstrance on my part between
each volley. Eventually I rushed at the offender and
commenced carrying her off to her mama, but she squalled
so fearfully that I set her down very firmly on a chair and
retired. Since then the infant has held me in great awe,
but I heard her whispering to herself the other day, * Das
Fraulein soil Kinder gar nicht gern haben, und junge Damen
kann ich nicht leiden ! ! ' x) I nearly burst out laughing —
the child is really clever, for though I was distinctly meant
1 They say the Fraulein doesn't like children — and I can't bear young
ladies.
234 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
to hear what it said, it looked perfectly unconcerned as if
it were soliloquising in solitude !!!...
I wish you could see me dancing now, hopping up to
the ceiling, arriving on the tips of my toes, looking well
over the right shoulder, blowing into the face of my partner,
and receiving in exchange many a blast from him — and
above all, my left hand not laid on his arm but curled
elegantly round, fingers inward, as if a photographer had
arranged them ! ! Onward I fly, backwards, forwards,
round the wrong way, and am considered a wonderful
dancer ! ! How I long for a Mr. Young with a long, shooting,
easy step (like Paddy's trot 10 years ago) that one can keep
up from the beginning of the dance to the end. . . .
(23)
March, '78.
... I had such fun the other day. I don't know when
I have laughed so much. There was a little soiree at the
Brockhauses. As they live next door I couldn't well get
a cab (Salomon St. consists of large detached houses with
gardens) but it was pouring weather and our garden was
a perfect swamp. So what do you think I did ? The
children here have a very large perambulator on four
wheels, and this was brought down from the loft. How
I got in I don't know, but it was such a tight fit that my
knees were up to my nose, and I never got down as far as
the seat but was wedged between the arms, tight ! The
whole head and all was then covered with a waterproof
and, looking more like clothes coming from the wash than
a human being, I was trundled along. I can't tell you
how nearly I was upset, as naturally I was too heavy to
allow of the Maedchen handling the perambulator as they
do generally (pressing the back and elevating the front
wheels) and, with the four wheels to contend against,
turning corners was perilous work. Just as I entered the
portico, two guests arrived on foot whom I knew very well
and who could not make out who or what I was ! One, a
pompous old Hof-Capellmeister, nearly collapsed when
I emerged gorgeous in black and silver out of my vehicle.
Since then I am fearfully chaffed and everyone wants to
hire the ' droshky von Frl. Smyth ! '
By the bye, did I tell you what capital luck I've had
about umbrellas ? I (of course) lost my nice new silk one
IN GERMANY AND ITALY
235
about four months after I came here — and to punish myself
bought another for four shillings, which I condemned
myself to carry about everywhere and which, of course,
I did not lose ! Well, one day I found in my room a very
nice, nearly new, umbrella, mounted on a polished ash-plant
— silk of course ! Really, I have made most conscientious
enquiries about this umbrella and it belongs to no one !
and I, of course, have appropriated it ! Isn't that splendid ?
I think perhaps it's Henschel's ! It was about the time
of his visit that it appeared ! ! . . .
(24)
March 16, 1878.
. . . Clipsie gives me blooming accounts of my lovely
mother — says you looked splendid at the R.M.C. ball in
grey silk and white lace and ' so absurdly young ! ' When
I come back it will be very delightful reproducing the old
times — sailing into a ball-room with you — though, alas,
I shan't know enough people to be detained one instant
in the ante-room. . . .
The only thing I object to here is the disorder — the
whole thing is what the Germans call a ' liederliche Wirth-
schaft ' *) — meals unpunctual — often too much salt in the
bouillon — which is remarked upon every day but nothing
comes of it. Then if a curtain gets torn it strikes no one
to mend it — you know the sort of thing. One good point
about our new landlord is, that he will have fresh roast
meat every day, so no more of those wonderful stews and
messes that, being in Germany, I always eat and now
don't object to, but never shall like ! !
... I think, Mother darling, I shall be able to pay dress-
makers' and doctors' bills out of my songs. At least
I shall try. If the money doesn't quite cover the sum
it will nearly. Do tell Papa that as for the boots, really
the 385. is economy in the end. The other pair I had in
December 1876 at 385. are only just done for, and that
through the skating chiefly — for those Acme skates ruin
boots fearfully. I think next year I'd better have a cheap
pair of boots made here specially for skating at I2S. ! The
buttoned boots, single soled, I had before I left home are
still like new and look lovely !
Hugger-mugger.
236 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
Now that the spring is here how I look forward to being
at home ! Coming back will be quite unlike anything
else I ever experienced — and the most heavenly thing I
have done in my life as yet — except perhaps when I began
to know I hadn't come here in vain.
May you never have anything so fearfully puzzling and
confusing to do as writing your first string quartet t,
Mother darling ! My hair is growing grey over it ! It
will be finished before I come home — and in the meantime
do look up 4 performers and well have a grand chamber-
music performance in the drawing room ! ... I've lost
my Counterpoint book and without it am as Samson
shorn of his strength. . . .
(25)
April 9, 78.
... I am still, besides other work, working away at
those songs to take to the printers to-morrow. They are
pretty sure to take them as now they are so well known
here. Whether they give me much for them is another
question — or indeed anything ! But I hope so. I went to
a musical entertainment yesterday evening at the mother
of Brahms's other great friend and, in spite of a little cough,
did a great deal of singing, till I was forcibly removed
from the piano by Frau Brockhaus, who wouldn't allow me
to do anything more. I got latish to bed and am dead tired
to-day. The weather is so horrid — it snows all day and yet
is so warm that only about two inches remain on the ground,
and the whole place is a perfect mash ! Yesterday, knowing
how I rave about Brahms, the daughter, Frau von Bezold,
sought out a visiting card of his and hid it under the card
with my name on ! When I found it, they hunted up a
piece of narrow pink tape to match my ribbons, and tied
it round my neck ! . . .
(26)
April, 1878.
. . . Just imagine what a goose I am. I went to
Breitkopf and Haertel — the music publishers par excellence
in the world. The nephew, who conducts the business,
Dr. Hase, I know very well and he is quite one of the most
charming men I ever met. But you know how unpleasant
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 237
it is to do business with a personal friend ! Well, he began
by telling me that songs had as a rule a bad sale — but
that no composeress had ever succeeded, barring Frau
Schumann and Fraulein Mendelssohn, whose songs had
been published together with those of their husband and
brother respectively. He told me that a certain Frau
Lang had written some really very good songs, but they
had no sale. I played him mine, many of which he had
already heard me perform in various Leipzig houses, and
he expressed himself very willing to take the risk and print
them. But would you believe it, having listened to all
he said about women composers, and considering how
difficult it is to bargain with an acquaintance, I asked
no fee ! Did you ever hear of such a donkey ! I should
have asked £2 ios., which would have dissolved one of
the dressmaker's bills ! So if, Mother darling, after all I
have to come down on you for that bill (which I still hope
not to do !) please consider it the price of my modesty ! . . .
(27)
Sunday, April 7, 1878.
... I think, Mother darling, Frau Dr. would be very
pleased if you wrote her a letter thanking her for her good-
ness to me and mentioning her letting me come for a few
days to her in the country. Of course you would have
written anyhow, but probably not till I came to England.
If you wrote at once (very clearly ! ! but in English, of
course !) she'd get it just before starting. She always takes
such an interest in my home — and you specially — I can't
talk to her too much about you all and my home-life.
With most people one feels rather shy of ' letting out '
(as F P would say) on the subject. One always is
afraid of boring them — but I never feel that with her, as
I know that the more I tell her, the better she is pleased.
My newer friends, Baron von Herzogenberg and his
fabulously beautiful wife (with a bad figure ! the Tauchnitzes
and Marie Geistinger are the only people in Leipzig with
figures !) are very delightful. They hold very much aloof
from Leipzig society — partly because in both is a rooted
dislike, almost amounting to a horror, of dilettantism.
She is absurdly musical and though she doesn't compose
much (only songs), is the first feminine musical genius
(bar Frau Schumann) that I have met. I suppose the
238 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
fact that Joachim, Brahms, and Frau Schumann are their
most intimate friends makes them so severe upon un-
thoroughness. In their presence I feel like a worm ! . . .
I mean because I write sonatas and string quartetts, and,
goodness knows what all, when I can't do a proper canon
or fugue (or indeed strict counterpoint very well). I have
made gigantic progress, but not thorough progress. I have,
in fact, made the tour of the world and don't know my own
country thoroughly so to speak. . . .
(28)
Passion Week, 1878.
. . . The day before yesterday I made the acquaintance
of a composer of Schumann's time, of whom Schumann
prophesied almost as much as he did of Brahms. You
see in the one case the prophecy came truer than in the
other, for Kirchner never composed anything great, though
his little things are beautiful. I used to play some of them.
Fraulein Sitte will probably know his Album Blaetter and
Acquarellen. He is exactly like Mr. Ewing ! As his life
is, to a certain extent, a failure, he is a very bitter, intensely
sardonic man — almost demoniacal. He spoke much of
the industry of the English in the Conservatorium— how
nearly all the ladies composed ! ! You can imagine how
pleasant this was for me ! and that I wasn't much disposed
to obey his command (for command it was) to play to him.
When I had done, he simply growled out : ' Immer weiter !
Sie duerfen componiren ! ' 1 People say this is fearfully
much for Kirchner ! After that he was most friendly and
offered to see me home and goodness knows what ! . . .
(29)
End of April, 1878.
... I had such a glorious time at Dresden with dear
Frau Doctor, and I should have stayed there till the middle
of this week (when she returns) were it not for a concert
given by the Bach Verein, to which, as you know, I belong
— and as the alti are weak and I can make a pretty good
row in the chest notes now, back I came, upon the summons
of the beautiful Frau von Herzogenberg.
1 Go on ! You may compose !
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 239
. . . And now I must tell you all about my adventures,
looking up Julia Finn.1 I searched out the name in the
address book, found it in a not very nice street in Dresden,
and, obtaining leave of absence from my hostess, sallied
forth in search of a new cousin. I was shown into a drawing
room, the decorations of which evidently aimed at English
style (German drawing rooms are got up as English parlours
at the seaside) but were of a somewhat gaudy, cheap
description. Thought I to myself, ' Louie's sister has not
Louie's taste ' and awaited with anxiety the arrival of
Cousin Julia. My dear Mother, imagine my feelings when
a small, dingy, eminently ' respectable ' person entered
and asked me what I wanted ! ! Having previously asked
the servant if Mrs. Finn was English and having received
an affirmative answer — having also ascertained that there
was but one Finn in the address book — I could not doubt
but this was my cousin, though she bore no resemblance
to Louie ! ! I advanced timidly and said, ' I think you
must be my cousin Julia/ ' Oh/ answers the person,
' I think yer must be makin' a mistake. Yer mean my
sister-in-law, Miss Durrant as was, 'oose no longer in the
town — lives in Blasewitz ! ' (a village about 3 miles from
Dresden). I was rather shocked at this apparition, who
begged me to wait till her 'usband came in. Presently,
an equally dingy but well-meaning individual in black came
in and informed me that ' Aunt Julia ' had removed from
Dresden 2 years ago and that if I'd like to see her he'd be
happy enough to accompany me out by tramway. The
good soul (who lectures in German in Dresden and of whom
I hope people think as much as he does of himself)
accompanied me to the village and led me to a small cottage,
out of which comes a stout, not so very ugly lady, greets
him with a kiss and Louie's voice to Jth of a tone, and
looks politely at me for information. I said, ' I am Ethel
Smyth/ whereat she embraced me very warmly and said,
' You dear child ! I'm so glad to make your acquaintance/
just as Louie would have said it. The brother-in-law said,
' Well, I'm not wanted 'ere, so I'll say good-day/ and we
parted on the best of terms, and I think he is a capital
old fellow, though shaky as to h's.
She carried me off indoors, made me stay to lunch of
course, and introduced me to her husband — a dear little
1 This was a first cousin of my mother who had eloped in her teens
with her brother's tutor.
240 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
man, also shaky as to h's, but much ' finer/ as the Germans
say, than his brother. I think I had never pictured any-
one more correctly to myself than I pictured her. She
is very stout, has lost her eyebrows in some fever, and has
corked herself rather crooked ones — otherwise no beautifica-
tion, and a nice fresh complexion. Fringe like a door mat,
also over the ears, so the effect is most . . . festive ! On
the top, a brilliant Paris bonnet, and a somewhat violent
yellowish grey cape with ostrich feathers — this when she
accompanied me home ; in the house an infuriated looking
mob cap crowns the edifice of brown hair. She has one
awful daughter as black as coal and very Jewish looking,
with an unwholesome looking complexion, and one jolly
little son of 9. Both talk English with a strong German
accent and rather stiffly, and are, of course, at home in
German. I can't tell you how hearty and jolly she was
and how glad she seemed to see me. I also was so glad
to meet with a relative like the people I know in England —
not like the awful Leipzig English. Her voice and manner
are so like Louie's that I had a queer home-ish feeling when
talking to her that I have not had since I left England.
I don't think for the whole 3 hours I was there we
spoke of Germany or the present — but entirely of the past,
and all about you. She could not tire of telling me about
you and the old times, and I can't tell you with what a
feeling I listened. She is the first person I ever met, with
whom I had time to talk and opportunity of talking about
you when you were young, and she enjoyed her task of
narrator as thoroughly as I did mine of listener. It was
all about you at Rackheath and Scottow — how beautiful
you were — how you sang as no one else, except, perhaps,
the Lind — how you were in all respects just her beau ideal
(and everyone else's) of what a young lady should be — of
how you had such masses of adorers, and how your behaviour
to them was just what it ought to have been ! She said
you used to have singing days, on which you sang up and
down stairs and all over the house, and that she had (if
all this is true you will know better than I, for romancing
runs in the Stracey blood, doesn't it ?) a great passion for
you and used to come up to your room when you were
dressing for dinner and fasten on your bracelets — until
one day, when she came upon you and Papa in a certain
room of which she showed me the windows in a photo she
has of Scottow ! That same night, she says, when she
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 241
was helping you to adorn, she said, deeply wounded and
jealous : ' Really, Cousin Nina, I can't think how you can
kiss that man with red hair/ whereat you boxed her ears
and said, ' How dared she speak so of your future
husband !!!!!' She said you had such perfect manners
and were so horrified (as indeed is to be expected) at some
youth who, after asking you to take wine with him, shovelled
up peas on his knife ! She also related -the tale of your
saying, ' My nose is like a torch ! ' She spoke much of the
trios sung by you, her Mother (about whose flute-like
voice she raves — I never knew Aunt Julia sang) and either
Lady Robinson or Mrs. Burney-Petre. . . . Again, I say,
the pleasure it was to me hearing all this is absolutely
inexpressible, so much so that I don't care to tell you
about Dresden and the glorious (gaudy) new Theatre, and
the splendid performance of Schiller's ' Wilhelm Tell/
(The Picture Gallery was shut for cleaning up ! Such a
sell !) If I go again at Whitsuntide I'm of course to look
her up. She told me to tell you she was delighted to see
me, and that I was exactly like my father, only your eyes
to a T ! Whereat I demur, first of all my eyes are not
half so good as my Mother's, and, secondly, they are quite
a different sort of eye ! Yours are oval — mine somewhat
round ! They all accompanied me in the ferry across
the Elbe (Blasewitz is opposite Loschwitz — the village the
' Berg ' is in), and then walked with me till we got to the
Berg. I was awfully pleased with her and very curious
to hear what you say of her as she was in days gone by.
She seemed rather hurt at never having heard of you till
last year, but said she supposed that comes of living at
Dresden. . . .
(30)
[Note. — This letter was written by and dictated to List who
was nursing me. Her own remarks are in italics. — E. 5.]
May 19, 1878.
My darling Mother, — Don't be alarmed at seeing a
strange handwriting — I'm in bed, but not sick ' unto death/
my nerves have been rather knocked up for some time and
now my unhappy heart has to bear the brunt of it. I have
been sent to bed in order to reduce the palpitation and
here may have to stay for a day or two longer, in all about
a week. Don't think, Mother darling, that I have been
VOL. I. R
242 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
left entirely on my own hook. I have been nursed during
this week as well as I ever was in my life, both night and
day, but as the instrument of my recovery happens to be
writing this for me, I will tell you all about it when I can
write to you myself. The poor amanuensis is suffering
severely from writing the accompanying ! And now, please
Mother, listen attentively to what's coming. . . .
[N.B. — Here follows a long account of my illness and of
the restrictions to be observed in England.}
Well, that's about all. It only remains to tell you
not to be anxious about me. You'll find me looking as
well as ever, and, alas, as inclined to gather the rosebuds
while I may as of yore. I am fairly on the road to recovery
and will get up to-morrow.
Ever your devoted child,
ETHEL.
Amanuensis cannot help saying that she enjoyed nursing
your dear, dear child so very much ; also she must assure
you that you have not the least occasion more to be discomforted
about Ethel.
[P.S. privately added by me.]
Mother darling, — The person who has written my letter
to you and nursed me all through this illness more like a
mother than anyone else is Frau von Herzogenberg. What
she has been to me I can't tell you and I have known her
hardly three months. It's queer that Frau Dr. isn't nursing
me — but she is so good about it. I daren't write more,
it's forbidden me. I can't now tell you all she's done
for me ! !
(31)
May 27, 1878.
... At last I am up and able to write to you with
my own hand, but just fancy, with pauses about every
three minutes, as writing brings on the attacks more than
anything almost. ... I have at last seen the absolute
necessity of acquiescing in the matter of my modus vivendi
during the holidays and have signed a paper of rules the
doctor prescribes for me. Imagine — no lawn tennis, no
riding, no dancing, nothing ! ! This to me, who have all
this year been looking forward to plunging with renewed
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 243
vigour into the old life for a little bit, and have been
glorying in the feeling that I could face the holly hedge
on the green, or an adversary at lawn tennis without
fear — that after I had been a week in home air the old
Adam would be fully re-established in me ! Still it is
true that is nothing against a life-time — and I know it
must be ! ...
I am much disgusted that I shall have to hurry over an
important matter, i.e., choosing the souvenirs of Leipzig
for the folks at home. I meant to have spent a whole month
in looking about, and now probably the matter must be
got over in a day or two. Such is life. Also I meant to
have spent the fortnight previous to my departure in
practising up various of my perfectly unplayable com-
positions to (I hope !) delight the maternal ear. Instead
of which I am not allowed to touch a piano, and as I can't
help it when it stands there, the Doctor says better send
it away ! ! So, Mother darling, you must put up with
them as they are — in rough — and when you hear them
listen to the composition, not the performance of the
same ! I can't realise that I shall see you all again so
soon. It is almost too good to be true, that is to say if
it comes off. Fancy if Mary is still there, which I hope
she will be ! .
(32)
Friday Night, June 7, 1878.
... I will send on your note to Frau v. H., who is far
away in Bohemia and will be so glad to have it. She
was always saying — specially while cooking something
for me — ' What fun it would be if your Mother were to
walk in suddenly, except that I fear I should not be here
in her place then ! ' which she certainly would not have
been.
... Oh ! Mother I hope the rules may be a little
relaxed. But the worst of it is I have promised my dear
German Doctor on my word of honour, signed a paper to
that effect which I must show you when I get home, and
unless he absolves me I fear I can't relax ! But we will
see and I will hope on. Otherwise I often suddenly burst
out into vehement howling at the bare idea of it, as I know
my year's devotion to the Muses has not affected my love
244
IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
for field sports, to which I know I have just as much natural
bent as to music. I'll jump over the lawn tennis net for
Captain S 's benefit once more before I leave home
again !
... Do tell Miss Sitte that when I am in England I
shall be so glad to have her to remind me of dear, dear
Germany, and I hope she will let me talk German with her
sometimes, that I may not quite forget it when there, though
I know what a trial it is to have foreigners talking one's
own language with one, when one is perfect mistress of the
language of the country one is in. Though not perfect
mistress of German by any means I can of course talk it
as fast as I like, and nothing annoys me so intensely as
when people insist upon talking bad English with me in
Germany. Still perhaps Frl. Sitte will talk German with
me out of good-nature.
FROM ELISABETH VON HERZOGENBERG (' LISL ')
[Note. — These early letters of List's are given mainly to
show the key in which our friendship started ; what I may
call the real letters, written when we came to know each other
thoroughly, will be found later. As she often lapses into
English I put ' in English ' when I am transcribing, and
' in German ' when translating. She once said she knew her
English style was a blend of baby-language and Dr. Johnson,
and often she uses it with comic intention ; at other times the
comic effect is involuntary.]
Schloss Wernsdorf, Bohemia : May 27, 1878.
(In German.) My dear, dear Ethel, — I hope you have
got my two greetings, one written in Leipzig, another
from Aussee, so that you hadn't to wait as long as you
expected for a line from me. I cannot forgive myself
for causing you so much agitation the last day ; any good
I may have done seems to me nullified by this last action !
But I know you won't agree, and that your loving heart
magnifies what I did for you and underestimates the delight
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 245
it was to me doing it. Surely one would have no heart
in one's bosom were it not among the intensest of pleasures
to be able to help someone dear to you ; to begin with, how
soothing to one's vanity to find oneself so important, so
longed for ! ...
Ethel, I won't make myself out worse than I am, but
really the last 14 days were such a delight, gave me so
much pleasure, that I often felt quite dishonorable in
calmly pocketing, as if I deserved them, the thanks that
poured so generously from your mouth. Don't go on
thanking me but let us both thank Fate that meant so well
by us on that memorable birthday of Dr. Paul's ! I confess
I do not look upon it as a misfortune that you became
so ill, that is to say that you had this acute attack ; firstly
because I don't think you would otherwise have been as
careful as you will be now, secondly because I doubt if
we should ever have got where we are now but for those
14 days.
(In English.) After to-morrow I hope to receive the
first bulletin, and perhaps — more and dearer to me — the
first lines from your own little hand. My darling, did the
horrid men come already to take away the piano ? and are
you growing daily pale and paler from obligatory Askese ? x
And do you very much long after all you have not, poor
little ill-treated, though tenderly loved child ? And what
does Dr. Langbein say about the term of your departure,
and will Miss Nancy be sure to wait till you can start safely
without an etiquette sticking on your back bearing the
word ' fragile ' ? Write to me soon, dearest !
I am not quite here yet. I never feel comfortable
at first ; I can't get accustomed to Heinrich's sister — so
unlike to him, the Graces not having attended her cradle ;
without the touch of tenderness without which it is so
difficult to me to think of a woman. Good, courageous,
upright, and all that, but very matter of fact. I like the
children and the 170 sheep here best, also a large good
Newfoundland dog with quite a way to remind one of some
of Longfellow's nice little poems — Open Window and that
sort. He has such a wonderful condescending way of
looking on the children when they play with him. Of
course he feels his superiority. They have a bird here in
a cage hanging in a tree in the garden — think what a
1 Self-denial.
246 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
cruelty ! — that reminds me of a certain poor little
Euphorion 1 when in a short time it will be at home, looking
on with folded arms when the others play lawn tennis !
I really do feel how cruel we are, Langbein and I, and yet
how necessary our cruelty is.
Good-bye and my blessing to you, my darling. I won't
write again till I have a letter from you. My love to Miss
Nancy ; it is such a comfort to me to know you are to
journey together. Tell her how I confide in her. Take
care of my little Ethel for the sake of your mother.
LISL.
P.S. — I don't want B to know yet that we call
each other ' du ' ; yet how should she unless you leave
letters about ? And I even ask myself if it is not a pity
for others to know, and perhaps make inward remarks
or smile — oh ! or to ask if one . . . but in fact what do
I care ? I have forgotten how to call Ethel ' Sie ' !
May 29, 1878.
(In English.) Here is my song. Now don't be thinking
I do not know that the doubled leading-note on the second
page, first bar (' fallt, ihr dunen Blatter ') is, in fact, false
and nasty, and an unclean matter altogether unworthy
the wife of Aloysius 2 ; but in spite of that I can't help
finding it expressive, and that it gives the touch of a certain
harshness that I want there ; for which reason Aloysius
has graciously permitted it as what the Catholics call a
' lassige Siinde ! ' 3 Poor little song it appears to me,
when I see it black on white, so poor and meagre and childish !
and still I have a kind of tenderness for it ; also because I
played it to my husband long before he was my husband,
in March '67, when I saw him for the last time before the
time from which I began a new reckoning. And he wanted
a copy of it, which of course I never gave him, laced up in
the Spanish boots of conventional holding-back as poor
Lisl was at that time ! There my darling — deal kindly
with it — this is all I can do for my child to-day. Henry
1 Child of Faust and Helen of Troy (in Part II of Goethe's Faust], who
came to grief through wilfulness and daring : a nickname of Lisl's for
myself.
* A nickname she gave her husband. 3 Venial sin.
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 247
sends you his love, a special message. He likes you very
much. . . . My Aunt Wullerstorf is a dear aunt but oh !
such an exciteable one. How can people be so un-calm ?
. . . But I love her dearly. . . .
(3)
May 31, 1878.
(In German.) ... I must just tell you an absurd dream
I had, which however will show you where my thoughts
are at night. I was spending the evening with the Rontgens,
but Johanna was not there, and I said to myself : ' Of
course she's looking after Ethel.' We were to make music
and I was to play 2nd violin in a Beethoven Quartett (to
which apparently I was quite accustomed) but they gave
me a shockingly written MS. part — all wrong too — so that
presently Papa Rontgen lost patience and stopped. I
apologised profusely but said the part was really disgraceful,
and also nearly illegible, owing to the masses of blotting-sand
on it which made it look like a cutlet fried in breadcrumbs.
(Observe this dreadful irruption of cooking into music, —
picture of my unfortunate Sphinx-nature !) Thereupon
Johanna came in and I rushed at her and asked after Ethel.
' Ethel is not at all well and must probably stay in bed
to-morrow too.' And I : ' How is that ? What have you
been up to ? ' Then Johanna drew forth a long list with
all her crimes written on it, and confessed that the worst
one was meeting Aunt Wullerstorf in the street and taking
her to see Ethel. ' What ! ' I cried out, ' that exciteable
aunt ? that aunt who never, never is allowed to go near a
sick person ? I must go to Ethel at once ' — and I rushed
away in terrible agitation, and woke up still quite upset
by the dream. Dear good Johanna must not be angry
with me ! it is all because she was so remorseful one day for
having gone to see you in the Salomonstrasse at a time when
visitors were forbidden ! .
(4)
June 2, 1878.
(In German) . . . Don't write long letters ; it's bad for
you and I can't write at length myself here. The Minuet
248 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED
form is best suited to us just now — ist Part : 16 bars ;
2nd Part : 16 bars ; a little Trio ; repeat the Minuet
and add a nice little Coda for the special edification of
YOUR MOTHER.
(5)
June 9, 1878.
(In German.) . . . Don't feel like that about returning
to England. In a way I myself feel as if we were ' drifting
farther and farther from each other/ but that cannot
change the fact that we love one another, that I ' had you '
when I was n, and shall have you till I'm 80 — and that's
such a good feeling ! . . . My child, I wonder sometimes
at the different ways Fate spins the thread which binds
people together — how it often takes years to enter into
possession, and how in our case something has grown
between us that tells me we belong together, inseparably !
... To think how I hung back at first ! I didn't know you
and am in principle against new friendships ; then too
there was a feeling of unfaithfulness towards other people
whom I knew better than you. I thought I was merely
attracted by little ways that appealed to me, and said
to myself : * You must look closely and weigh well.' . . .
And now, there you are, little tree, grown into my heart
with such deep roots that nothing can ever tear them out !
And I gladly own to myself that things are thus, because
I have studied you so closely and believe I know you so
thoroughly ! . . . (In English.) Yes, I have been photo-
graphed by the best man in Vienna, and I think in all four
positions I'll have a big nose, for the atelier was hot which
always produces big noses. But you should not be photo-
graphed again. I will not have you become a waister —
or do you say spendthrift ? (have I hit the word now ?)
and would hold you a sermon but that I feel very week
and touched and melting away like butter in the sun.
I am frightened of the temptations at your home — no
riding, no tennis, a Pilgrim's Progress indeed — and anxious
to hear how you pass through the tests, poor little Pamina,
quite alone without a Tamino to help you — only the Magic
Flute of your affection for me, and Music, that dear consoler,
as sole support ! I don't like your beginning by those
races ! Of course your fanatic passion for horses must
have the effect to excite you when you look on at such
IN GERMANY AND ITALY 249
racings, that in themselves are so exciting ; and really it
isn't necessary, now is it ? You can show off your new
little hat (for two pounds) when you make your calls of
arrival (? Antritts-Visiten I mean). Darling don't be angry,
I know you don't care about all that stuff, and prefer sitting
at home, since you cannot play tennis, at your writing
table and your piano, but the kind mother will of course
try to make show of her daughter, and in this respect you
will, I believe, have the hardest battles to fight. . . .
CHAPTER XXII
SUMMER 1878
THE journey to England via Rotterdam and Harwich,
punctuated by postcards and telegrams to and from Lisl
at every available stage, is chiefly memorable as the most
appalling of all my many Channel crossings. Nancy and I
shared a cabin and her sufferings were terrific ; but just
when I was beginning to reflect with alarm that people
have been known to die under these circumstances, a calm
voice below me remarked : ' I think the horrors of sea-
sickness are much exaggerated/ My father met us at
Harwich, and we started for our respective homes by a
line built apparently on the switch-back principle — my
first experience of this detestable effect of a rough sea
voyage.
What a wonderful return home it was ! Invalid and
incipient ' Phoenix,' as mother persisted in calling me
sometimes, I was spoiled to my heart's content, the children,
whom I called my white slaves, fetching and carrying for
me, and even lacing up my boots. The glamour of home,
which even at Leipzig had never paled, seemed positively
dazzling ; how well I remember the flavour of it all — the
incredible youth and jollity of the young ones, the loving-
ness of mother, the beloved dogs and horses ! I had not
expected much cordiality from my father towards an un-
repentant and apparently justified rebel, but the fact that
my allowance had not been exceeded by one penny, together
with the less important one of countless testimonials to
my seriousness of purpose, went a long way, and I found
the life I had chosen was an accepted fact.
But presently, when the novelty wore off, I began to
250
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 251
review the situation with dismay. My Leipzig doctor had
drawn up a document which might have been headed by
the word dear among all others to the German heart,
' Verboten,' for it was a list of forbidden joys that included,
with the exception of work (which was permitted in modera-
tion), all the things I loved best, namely tennis, riding, and
dancing. I had shed what seemed to Lisl inconceivably
childish tears over this document, but solemnly signed it,
as did she and Dr. Langbein. Hardly had I been ten days
at home, however, when all the worst symptoms disap-
peared by magic, and I began to kick against the pricks.
The matter was complicated by a rather comic infusion
of jealousy. No one ever rejoiced at heart more unselfishly
than my mother at any kindness shown to her children, and
for Lisl's love and care of me (as previously for Frau
Doctor's) she was deeply and touchingly grateful. Never-
theless when it came to my life at home being regulated
by far-off strangers, when her wondering ears heard me
refusing even to handle a racquet for fear of temptation,
although it was plain to sensible English judgment that
there was no longer any reason why I should not play, this
was more than her philosophy could bear ; and I cannot
help thinking that when she suggested I should see Sir
William Jenner and be formally released from my promises,
her motives may have been more complex than appeared.
There was a very funny incident a week or two later,
when, just to see if my eye was still in, and standing firmly
rooted to one spot, I made my sisters serve to me, my
mother, unknown to us, watching the proceedings from
her bedroom window. At luncheon she remarked with
obvious satisfaction : * I see you have begun tennis again
in spite of Frau von Herzogenberg/ whereupon I angrily
declared it was not so, and that taking a serve or two was
not playing tennis — to which she rejoined that it seemed
to her uncommonly like it. In short there was such a
scene that, much to my surprise, Papa suddenly broke in
with : ' You don't understand the game ; she says she was
not playing and there's an end of it.' And as usual when
he intervened she gave in at once. Eventually, in spite
of impassioned remonstrance from Lisl, including the
252 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
quotation of many a slighting remark I had rashly made
at Leipzig about English doctors, all embargoes were
removed, and the day came when I joyfully informed her,
whom the news left more than indifferent, that my game
was as good as ever, in fact better.
To the end I never succeeded in making her grasp what
games and sport mean to people of our race ; that side
of life seemed to her trivial, or at least unworthy the
passionate interest of a budding artist. When I had told
her in my sick room that the family were requested never
to mention hunting in their letters, because the very word
drove me wild with longing, I remember her amazed look
as she said : ' My dear child, you must surely be mad ! '
And though she eventually learned to accept these aberra-
tions with philosophy, they belonged in the large category
of ' things in you I shall never understand.'
That summer a ridiculous sequel to one of my Leipzig
adventures took place. When I had parted some months
before on terms of grateful but strictly platonic affection
from the kind young man who had conducted the sale of
' grandeurs ' in the famous libel case, we had settled that
he should come and see me in my own home, which he did.
But what was my astonishment when, in the course of a
ride together, it became clear that he had construed this
invitation into an encouragement to persevere in his suit !
I don't think I have ever been more angry ; from the first
I had seen he was in earnest, and whoever I had flirted with
it certainly was not with him ; consequently my diatribes
concerning male fatuousness and vanity — none the less
stunning for being shouted over my shoulder at full
gallop — seemed to me amply justified. He was deeply
hurt, and we parted with stiffness on both sides.
I did a certain amount of what I regret to say was
referred to in letters to Lisl as ' that horrid counterpoint/
and knew she was similarly employed. But under what
ideal circumstances ! Ensconced peacefully in a mountain
district, with her Aloysius, as we called him, at her elbow,
(Aloysiusbeinga Jesuit noble of the Middle Ages who forsook
the world for higher things and was eventually canonised)
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 253
naturally she made rapid progress ; whereas the exercises
I sent from time to time, including those on the bird-call
I quoted, were far from satisfactory and few in number,
the blame of course being laid by both of them on balls,
tennis, and general frivolity. One letter of remonstrance
apparently made me ' howl/ and altogether caused such
despair that Aloysius himself felt moved to write and
administer consolation. But our whole early correspond-
ence testifies to the grave, beneficent influence exercised
by Lisl.1
On one thing I had set my heart, to give my mother
one great musical pleasure, and eventually decided on a
home-production of the Liebeslieder Walzes. I beat up
in the neighbourhood and at Aldershot four people with
ears, voices, and feelings, into whom it was possible to
drum the vocal parts, and a really musical Russian woman
to help in the Piano Duet accompaniment. It was like
teaching parrots, but the result was an excellent perform-
ance— in Mrs. Longman's opinion as good as anything you
could hear in London, and it may be remembered that
she was considered an authority. Later on I went to stay
with Alice and Mary, and actually pulled off the same
feat in Edinburgh with new performers and equal success.
Lisl, who was seeing a good deal of Brahms just then,
told him all about this propaganda work of mine and all
about me, which of course filled me with mingled terror
and delight. She informed me too that he was in his
best mood — ' treats me so kindly, as a dear, big Newfound-
land dog treats a little King Charles/ and since I may
have uncomplimentary things to say about Brahms by and
by, it will be a pleasure to quote later on some very warm
tributes she pays him, to which I heartily subscribe.2 She
generally used English in the lighter parts of her letters,
German in the others, and aware of my own recklessness
as to leaving correspondence about, as also of my mother's
jealousy, I had begged her to ' tell me ' in English and
' speak to me ' in German. I even went farther. By
way of discouraging requests to let mother see one of
my friend's letters I once threw a wholly German one on
1 Appendix III., ii. p. 17, Nos. 2, 7, 12 et seq. 2 Appendix, ii. p. 21.
254 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
to her lap, saying : ' do read this, it's so amusing/ As
I expected, the caligraphy defeated her, and I was asked
to read it aloud instead, which I did — with omissions.
Meanwhile, as the summer went on, the old feeling ot
the staleness and pointlessness of home life came back,
and with it a furious longing for Leipzig and my new
friends, to cheat which I warmed up a few former
enthusiasms. . . . (Lisl's first intimation of what was to be
a perennial subject of dispute between us, my insatiable
appetite for humanity.) About this time, too, the after-
math of enlarging Frimhurst was beginning to be reaped.
My father announced that we had for some time been
exceeding our income, but it seemed impossible to work
up zeal for a whole-hearted scheme of retrenchment. This
theme was the source of constant and fruitless sparring,
and of course the old friction between me and my mother
began again, with the very natural element of soreness
as to foreign influence thrown in.
Again, though I was no longer exactly a black sheep
in my father's eyes, he seemed to me wilfully antagonistic,
and I wrote miserably to Lisl that I was becoming wicked
at home — hard and rebellious ; that I never should learn
self-control and that there was ' a perfect devil in my
heart that sleeps only at Leipzig.' In fact I could hardly
await the end of the holidays, particularly as I had finished
a bit of work that I felt certain would please Aloysius
better than my counterpoint, namely ' Variations on an
Original Theme,' one of the variations being inspired by,
and named after, the filly I had broken. Mercifully, as
in the old days, the friction between me and my mother
was presently forgotten in her perfect appreciation of this
early effort and my consequent delight in the depth of her
musical instinct ! I remember flinging my arms round
her and saying, ' You are more musical than all my friends
put together,' which in a sense was perfectly true. Thus,
at the end of September, in a glow of restored affection and
harmony, I left for Germany, this time being allowed
without remonstrance to travel under my own wing.
CHAPTER XXIII
AUTUMN AND WINTER 1878
DURING the previous winter I had met one of Brahms's
oldest friends, a deeply musical and most unprofessorial
Saxon named Engelmann, who nevertheless held a Pro-
fessorship at the University of Utrecht, and whose wife,
originally a professional pianiste, was said to be one of the
finest artists alive. Both of them were old friends, too, of
the Herzogenbergs, and as he had suggested my coming
to see them on my way back to Leipzig I did so, and spent
an enchanting week, sight-seeing and music-making.
Off the music stool my hostess was a pleasant, childlike,
not very interesting little person, who seemed to spend
most of her time laughing at nothing in particular ; at the
piano the whole woman changed, and you were in presence
of a grave, inspired, passion-wrought pythoness. Her
husband was an admirable cellist, and in that house I
heard, among other things, the Brahms Piano Quartetts,
the Quintett, and the Horn Trio as I shall never hear them
again. We were quite among ourselves, except for Julius
Rontgen who came over from Amsterdam to see me, and
incidentally played viola. In a couple of days Frau'
Engelmann knew my Variations by heart, and I learned
what one's compositions can become in the hands of a
great artist.
This was my first visit to Holland ; I was shown many
beautiful things, among them the desolate Dead Towns
on the Zuyder Zee, where strange, unfriendly fishermen in
fantastic costumes, with long, straight, coal-black locks
hanging into their eyes, squat all day in the streets, glaring
hatred at intrusive strangers. I remember too how we
255
256 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
scorned a very smart Amsterdam bankeress, who strutted
about the deck of the steamer in brown boots, the first
any of us had seen. We thought them ridiculous and
unpleasantly ' auffallend,' x and so apparently did the other
people on the boat.
Two days later I was back in Leipzig. Driving
straight to the Humboldt Strasse, where the Herzogenbergs
lived, I appeared unexpectedly in their flat just as they
had sat down to breakfast, and noticed that Lisl turned
ashen — the effect, as I then learned, of any surprise, whether
pleasant or the reverse. I remember that the spectre of
her dread infirmity rose before me for a moment, to vanish
in the three-part counterpoint of our Wiedersehen. They
overwhelmed me with congratulations on my stalwart,
healthful, sun-browned appearance, for of course they had
never seen me in my normal country-life condition and
found me almost unrecognisable. My toilette had been
performed in the train, my luggage left at the station, and
under my arm was a parcel, the contents of which would,
I hoped, banish all recollection of contrapuntal failures.
And so it turned out ; the Variations pleased them as much
as they had the Engelmanns, and far from being taken
tragically, as I had half expected, the ' Filly ' variation
was considered one of the best of the bunch. Then a new
Brahms Motett, of which she had spoken in a letter,2 was
played to me, followed by some new work of Heinrich's,
till, about half an hour before the midday meal, Lisl dis-
appeared to see to something in the kitchen, while he
examined and discussed the Variations in detail. And
when, after one of the admirably cooked meals which were
the secret pride of that little household, we arrived at the
sweet stage, what did I see but the ' Siisse Speise ' I love
best in the world, the dish which to this day I cannot
perceive advancing in my direction or mentioned on a
menu without emotion . . . meringues — called at Frimhurst
and throughout English kitchens ' marrangs ' ! I had once
written from home that whatever the differences between
my mother and myself we were of one mind on that subject,
1 Conspicuous, 2 Appendix, ii. p. 21.
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 257
and Lisl had determined to show me what the hands that
had just been delicately disentangling and re-combining
the ingredients of a Motett in I forget how many parts
could do with eggs and sugar— for the meringues were her
handiwork, cases and all. Not too sweet, not too sticky
(which however is better than too powdery), the cream
neither over solid nor yet whipped into fluff, in a word,
and without hyperbole, masterpieces ! . . .
After dinner, for Germans dined then at midday, I
collected my luggage, and Lisl and I drove off to the
Salomonstrasse. The old house was transmogrified ; the
stairs had been mended, the walls re-papered, and the
whole place looked fresher and cleaner than one would
have believed possible. The windows of my new rooms
faced south-west, looking over fruit-trees and acacias, and I
suppose never was young musician more ideally and cheaply
lodged. By the next day I had rigged up a grand trophy,
consisting of racquets, skates, fox-brushes, a hunting-
crop, and my long boot-hooks, which roused the admira-
tion of my landlady's children — a well-brought-up set of
youngsters this time, who all started a discreet ' Schwar-
merei ' for me. Frau Merseburger, their mother, was a
jolly, buxom, pleasant-faced woman, of about thirty-five,
with a dried-up, immensely polite little husband anywhere
between fifty-five and seventy. Publisher and bookseller
on a very small scale, the strong line of the firm was school
books, and gaudily got up little volumes of very minor
lyrics which reminded me of my great-uncle the Professor's
effusions. He gave me one or two of these in case I should
feel tempted to set extracts to music, and I then wondered,
as always, how stuff on that level manages to get into print
at all. The only other lodger was a big, shy man of about
forty with a huge fair beard and spectacles. He had a
room on the ground-floor, mine being on the second, and
contrived by deft dartings in and out of the house, and
cautious tactics in passages, to be as good as invisible.
I noticed that Frau Merseburger was rather embarrassed
and apologetic about this lodger, why I could not imagine,
but as she married him when old Merseburger died a few
years later, I have since hazarded a guess.
VOL. I. S
258 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
As I said, I supped in my own room, but on a few grand
occasions, Herr Merseburger's birthday and so on, I was
invited down below, the other lodger occasionally being
present too. Once we were favoured with the company of
a nephew of my landlord's, stoker or something of the sort
on an ocean tramp, who was reported to have cruised a
good deal in Chinese waters, on the strength of which he
gave us an exhibition of Chinese singing and dancing — a
very odd performance that worked his uncle up into a frenzy
of senile delight. After a glass or two of sweet champagne
on the top of beer and Rhine wine, the old gentleman used
invariably to do two things — first quote Goethe, and then,
a little later on, begin pinching his wife. She would laugh,
get very red, and say ' Aber Mannchen ! . . . benimm
dich doch ! ' (' but . . . little husband ! . . . behave thy-
self ') ; meanwhile the lodger sat unmoved, and Frau Merse-
burger's deprecating glances and giggles were addressed
not to him but to me. It was a very harmless display, but
next morning there would be a touch of apology in the old
man's polite hopes that the feast had agreed with me (for
this is the form such compliments take in Germany) and
I imagined a Curtain Lecture had been administered.
Such was the family on whom the comfort of my daily life
depended, and who, I may add, took any amount of trouble
to ensure it. Not only for this reason, but for others which
can be imagined after reading the above, I never think of
the Merseburgers without a little gush of friendliness and
amusement.
From now onwards I became, and remained for seven
years, a semi-detached member of the Herzogenberg family ;
wherever they were bidden I was bidden too ; not a day
passed but that one or other of my meals TTas taken with
them ; and though like horses I have always preferred
getting back for the night to my own stable, the little
spare room, stocked for my needs, was always ready when
required. And after I was in bed Lisl would come in,
comb and brush in hand, her hair streaming over a white
dressing-gown — ' all in white and gold ' as I put it in my
youthful enthusiasm — to make sure I had everything I
1878 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 259
needed. Daily I became more conscious of the fineness
and strength of her personality — qualities which those
who care to read such letters of hers as I give will, I think,
feel, notwithstanding the inadequacies of translation.
But on one point I want to lay special stress, because
in the years to come, when it militated so terribly against
me, I tried to remember it had once been my chief delight ;
I mean a certain strong simplicity of soul that reminded
me of the Elgin marbles, something at once womanly and
incorruptible that suggested possible limitations but had
a subtle majesty of which not even the greatest degree of
intimacy dulled my perception. Witchery, an un-Greek
element perhaps, was supposed to be her chief characteristic,
and certainly her dear lovely person carried out that idea
more than the other. Nevertheless had the Venus of Milo
been a mortal, I think the large, quiet motions of her spirit
would have been like Lisl's, except for two traits that may
have been lacking in the goddess ; a curious most touching
humility, lurking, unnoticed by most people, at the bottom
of her soul, and a lovingness that had the sweetness of ripe,
perfect fruit, and which no one but her husband and I
knew in its fullness. When I add that Herzogenberg was
on far too big lines to begrudge her a semblance of what
nature had withheld — or me the blessing of her tender
mothering love — it will be allowed that the foundation of
our friendship seemed well and truly laid.
In musical matters Lisl and I saw absolutely eye to
eye, and it was a strange intoxicating thing to realise that
in moments of musical ecstasy the heart of the being on
earth you loved best was so absolutely at one with yours
that it might have been the same heart. I think I was
always more critical than either of them as regards weak
spots in Brahms, or even the older classics, and was never
able, as they were, to admire every single page Bach ever
wrote, including his 5 finger exercises. No doubt, too, the
catholicity of taste I acquired in after life would have
shocked them, but that day had not yet dawned. Mean-
while Lisl and I plodded away at our counterpoint in
friendly rivalry, and used sometimes to wonder whether
Brahms, given a ' cantus firmus ' to work in four parts,
260 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1878
would turn out anything so very much better than our
productions. Herzogenberg was a splendid teacher, but
though my industry and zeal left nothing to be desired,
quite the reverse, he told me I wasn't really a good pupil— --
which I suppose any master would say of a beginner who
always claims to know best !
I won't speak of a very thrilling unforgettable event,
Frau Schumann's Jubilee, which took place that winter,
nor of my riding adventures, including the most fantastic
hunt I ever took part in, because these events are described
elsewhere.1 Of course I spent Christmas with the Her-
zogenbergs, and the table round my little tree was paved
with miniature scores of Beethoven quartetts, from Op. 59
onwards. Brahms remarked that for the present ' the child '
ought to confine herself to studying Op. 18 — a symptom
of paternal interest which almost melted Lisl to tears, but
rather affronted ' the child.'
By and by, borne along by Papa Rontgen's teaching
enthusiasm, and despite hands ill adapted to the instru-
ment, I began learning the violin, and eventually became
equal to taking second violin in easy quartetts. The
lessons were arranged to include the excellent sit-down
Rontgen tea — blessed cry of his Dutch blood — and after
tea he taught me chess. I got so passionately attached
to the game, though a very poor player, that eventually
it had to be given up, otherwise I should have spent my
life doing nothing else.
1 Appendix III, ii. p. 35, Nos. i and 2 ; p. 37, No. 3.
CHAPTER XXIV
BRAHMS
EARLY in 1879, I think some time in January, Brahms
came to Leipzig to conduct his Violin Concerto — played
of course by Joachim, who had just been introducing it
at Amsterdam, and was much upset at having to tune
down his ears again to normal pitch, after having learned,
as he said, to play it apparently in D# major in Holland —
a hard feat ! I understood then why pitch always has a
tendency to rise, for, wedded as Joachim was to orthodoxy
in all things, I nevertheless caught a few remarks about
' increased brilliancy/ and so on. That Concerto, which
has never been among my favourite Brahms works, may
for aught I know be child's play to students nowadays ;
at that time however the technique was unfamiliar and
not considered favourable to the instrument. Wags called
it ' Concerto against (instead of for) the Violin/ But I
fancy my musical sensibility was blurred in the wild excite-
ment of at last getting to know the great man himself.
During the following years I saw a good deal of him, on
and off, and here follows the summing-up of my impressions
for what they are worth.
Some people, I believe, have youthful enthusiasms,
even in their own branch of art, that wane as years go
on, but I can remember no musical recantations. A
favourable judgment seems to me to imply a satisfied
need ; you may have many needs, but why should one
interfere with the other ? Why, when you come to know
and admire, say, Anatole France, should you delight less
in someone at the opposite pole, for instance Dickens ?
From the very first I had worshipped Brahms's music, as
261
262 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
I do some of it now; hence was predisposed to admire
the man. But without exactly disliking him, his person-
ality neither impressed nor attracted me, and I never
could understand why the faithful had such an exalted
opinion of his intellect. Rather taciturn and jerky as a
rule, and notoriously difficult to carry on a conversation
with, after meals his mind and tongue unstiffened ; and
then, under the stimulus of countless cups of very strong
black coffee, he was ready to discuss literature, art, politics,
morals, or anything under the sun. On such occasions,
though he never said anything stupid, I cannot recall
hearing him say anything very striking, and when his
latest pronouncement on Bismarck, poetry, or even music
was ecstatically handed round, it generally seemed to
me what anyone might have said.
Once only do I remember his taking an exceptional
line. A portrait of the old Kaiser by Lenbach, recently
exhibited at the Museum, had aroused such a storm of
indignation that it was withdrawn, and I believe ended
by being ' verboten ' as far as public galleries were con-
cerned. The reason was that whereas all other portraits
of Wilhelm I. represented a martial-looking veteran of
about sixty, of whom the Press stated that he swung
himself on to his horse without the aid of a mounting
block, Lenbach had painted a very tired old man of eighty-
four, with pale, flabby cheeks, and sunken, lack-lustre eyes
— in short the fine old wreck he was, of whom it was
whispered that, as a matter of fact, he had to be lifted
on to his horse in the recesses of the stable yard in order
to make his daily appearance in the Thiergarten. The
picture was infinitely .pathetic and even beautiful ; so, it
seemed to me, was the idea of the old warrior determined
to sally forth as long as he could sit on a horse's back,
no matter how he got there. But the people who manu-
facture public opinion in Germany saw in this record of
human decay something detrimental to monarchical pres-
tige, some going so far as to declare the picture should
be publicly destroyed and the painter arraigned for Use
majeste — in short the incident opened one's eyes to the
gulf that lies between German and Anglo-Saxon mentality.
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 263
There was a minority of another way of thinking, but
these kept pretty quiet, and I was delighted to find that
Brahms, who always had the courage of his opinions and
truckled to no one, thought the whole outcry preposterous,
and said so.
I think what chiefly angered me was his views on
women, which after all were the views prevalent in
Germany, only I had not realised the fact, having imagined
' mein Mann sagt ' was a local peculiarity. Relics of
this form of barbarism still linger in England, but as
voiced by a people gone mad on logic, worshippers of
brute force, and who visualise certain facts with the hard
stare of eyes devoid of eyelashes, these theories would, I
fancy, repel even our own reactionaries. George III,
himself a German, might have subscribed 150 years ago
to William II 's famous axiom about women being out of
place anywhere except in the kitchen, nursery, and church,
but you often heard it quoted with complete assent by
German women themselves in my day.
Brahms, as artist and bachelor, was free to adopt
what may be called the poetical variant of the ' Kinder,
Kirche, Kuche ' axiom, namely that women are play-
things. He made one or two exceptions, as such men
will, and chief among these was Lisl, to whom his attitude
was perfect . . . reverential, admiring, and affectionate,
without a tinge of amorousness. Being, like most artists,
greedy, it specially melted him that she was such a splendid
Hausfrau ; indeed as often as not, from love of the best,
she would do her own marketing. During Brahms's visits
she was never happier than when concocting some exquisite
dish to set before the king ; like a glorified Frau Rontgen
she would come in, flushed with stooping over the range,
her golden hair wavier than ever from the heat, and cry :
' Begin that movement again ; that much you owe me ! '
and Brahms's worship would flame up in unison with the
blaze in the kitchen. In short he was adorable with
Lisl.
In his relations with her husband, who completely
effaced himself as musician in the master's presence, he
took pains to be appreciative, but could not disguise the
264 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
fact that Herzogenberg's compositions did not greatly interest
him. Once when he had been in a bad temper and rather
cruel about them, Lisl rated him and wept, and Brahms
kissed her hand and nearly wept too, and it appears there
was a most touching scene ; but the thing rankled in her
bosom for a long time.
To see him with Lili Wach, Frau Schumann and her
daughters, or other links with his great predecessors was
to see him at his best, so gentle and respectful was his
bearing ; in fact to Frau Schumann he behaved as might
a particularly delightful old-world son. I remember a
most funny conversation between them as to why the theme
of his D major Piano Variations had what she called ' an
unnecessary bar tacked on/ this being one of the supreme
touches in that wonderful, soaring tune. She argued the
point lovingly, but as ever with some heat, and I thought
him divinely patient.
His ways with other women-folk — or to use the detest-
able word for ever on his lips, ' Weibsbilder ' — were less
admirable. If they did not appeal to him he was incredibly
awkward and ungracious ; if they were pretty he had an
unpleasant way of leaning back in his chair, pouting out
his lips, stroking his moustache, and staring at them as a
greedy boy stares at jam- tartlets. People used to think
this rather delightful, specially hailing it, too, as a sign that
the great man was in high good-humour, but it angered
me, as did also his jokes about women, and his everlasting
gibes at any, excepting Lisl of course, who possessed brains
or indeed ideas of any kind. I used to complain fiercely
to her about this, but her secret feeling was, I expect, that
of many Anti-Suffragist women I have known, who, for
some reason or other on the pinnacle of man's favour them-
selves, had no objection to the rest of womenkind being held
in contempt — the attitude of Fatima the Pride of the
Harem. To be fair to Lisl I never heard her express
definite sentiments on the subject, about which I had never
thought myself, but as she was of her epoch and intensely
German, her instinct was probably that of Fatima.
A delightful trait in Brahms was his horror of being
lionised. He had a strong prejudice against England
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 265
which he would jocularly insist on for my benefit, but what
chiefly prevented his going there was dread of our hero-
worshipping faculties : ' I know how you went on with
Mendelssohn/ he said. What with their own embarrass-
ment and his total lack of ease — or, as the Italians put it,
lack of education — ordinary mortals who humbly tried to
convey to him their admiration for his music had rather
a bad time. The only person who sailed gaily through
such troubled waters was Consul Limburger, but this again
did not please Brahms and outraged the elect. After
some performance, Limburger once remarked in his airy
way : * Really, Herr Doctor, I don't know where you mean
to take us in the slow movement, whether to Heaven or
Hell ! ' and Brahms replied with a mock bow : ' Whichever
you please, Herr Consul/ which was quoted as a brilliant
piece of repartee that ought to have crushed the audacious
Limburger. But one retort of his was really rather good.
The first subject in one of his Chamber works is almost
identical with a theme of Mendelssohn's, and when some
would-be connoisseur eagerly pointed out the fact, Brahms
remarked : ' Ganz richtig — und jeder Schafskopf merkt's
leider sofort ! ' (' Quite so — and the worst of it is every
blockhead notices it directly/)
I am bound to say his taste in jokes sometimes left much
to be desired, and can give an instance on the subject of
my own name, which all foreigners find difficult, and which,
as I innocently told him, my washerwoman pronounced
' Schmeiss/ Now the verb ' schmeissen/ to throw violently,
is vulgar but quite harmless ; there is however an antique
noun, ' Schmeiss/ which means something unmentionable,
and a certain horrible fly which frequents horrible places
is called ' Schmeiss- Fliege/ As Brahms was for ever com-
menting on the extreme rapidity of my movements he
found the play upon words irresistible and nicknamed me
' die Schmeiss-Fliege/ but Lisl was so scandalised at this
joke that he had to drop it.
Among his admirers it was the fashion to despise Wagner,
but to this he demurred, and a remark he often made
' His imitators are monkeys (Affen) but the man himself has
something to say ' was cited as proof of his noble, generous
266 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
disposition. People like Joachim and Herzogenberg con-
sidered Wagner a colossal joke, and I remember their relating
how as a sort of penance they sat through a whole act of
' Siegfried/ keeping up each other's spirits by exchanging
a ' Good morning ' whenever a certain chord, let us say
a diminished ninth, occurred in the score — a very provoking
pleasantry even to hear about.
I like best to think of Brahms at the piano, playing
his own compositions or Bach's mighty organ fugues,
sometimes accompanying himself with a sort of muffled
roar, as of Titans stirred to sympathy in the bowels of
the earth. The veins in his forehead stood out, his
wonderful bright blue eyes became veiled, and he seemed
the incarnation of the restrained power in which his own
work is forged. For his playing was never noisy, and
when lifting a submerged theme out of a tangle of music
he used jokingly to ask us to admire the gentle sonority
of his ' tenor thumb/
One of his finest characteristics was his attitude towards
the great dead in his own art. He knew his own worth —
what great creator does not ? — but in his heart he was
one of the most profoundly modest men I ever met, and
to hear himself classed with such as Beethoven and Bach,
to hear his C minor Symphony called ' The Tenth Sym-
phony/ 1 jarred and outraged him. Once, when he turned
up to rehearse some work of his, Reinecke had not yet
finished rehearsing one of Mozart's symphonies — I forget
which — and after the slow movement he murmured some-
thing to Lisl that I did not catch. She afterwards told
me he had said : ' I'd give all my stuff (Kram) to have
written that one Andante ! '
Among desultory remarks of his which remained in
my mind, I remember his saying that he had given up
predicting what a young composer's development would
be, having so often found that those he thought talented
came to nothing and vice versa ; and in this connection he
pointed out that all the work of Gluck's that still lives
was written after he was fifty. I have never looked up
1 The implication was that it equalled, or surpassed, Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony.
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 267
Gluck in a Lexicon to see if this opinion would still hold
good.
To me personally he was very kind and fatherly in his
awkward way, chiefly, no doubt, because of the place I
held in his friend's heart ; but after a very slight
acquaintance I guessed he would never take a woman-
writer seriously, and had no desire, though kindly urged
by him to do so, to show him my work. At last one
day, without asking my leave, Lisl showed him a little
fugue of mine, and when I came in and found them looking
at it he began analysing it, simply, gravely, and appre-
ciatively, saying this development was good, that modu-
lation curious, and so on. Carried away by surprise and
delight I lost my head, and pointing out a constructive
detail that had greatly fussed Herzogenberg — the sort of
thing that made him call me a bad pupil — asked eagerly :
' Don't you think if I feel it that way I have a right to
end on the dominant ? ' Suddenly the scene changed,
back came the ironic smile, and stroking his moustache
he said in a voice charged with kindly contempt : ' I am
quite sure, dear child, you may end when and where you
please ! ' . . . There it was ! he had suddenly remembered
I was a girl, to take whom seriously was beneath a man's
dignity, and the quality of the work, which had I been
an obscure male he would have upheld against anyone,
simply passed from his mind.
Now let us suppose a publisher had been present —
and they swarmed at the Herzogenbergs — what would
have been the effect of this little scene on a budding
inclination to print for me later on ? And does the public
realise that unless it is published music cannot possibly
get known ?
• • • • • •
I have no intention of alluding to my own work in
these memoirs, unless to make passing mention of such
early performances as happen to come within its scope ;
but there is one incident that happened some years later
which, for women at least, has general application, and
of which the fugue story reminds me. I once showed a
big choral work to Levi, the great Wagner conductor —
268 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
an open-minded man and one not afraid to look truth in
the face. After hearing it he said : ' I could never have
believed that a woman wrote that ! ' I replied, ' No, and
what's more, in a week's time you won't believe it ! ' He
looked at me a moment, and said slowly : ' I believe you
are right ! ' Prejudice was bound to prevail over the
evidence of his senses and intellect — in the end he would
surely feel there must have been a mistake somewhere !
... It is this back-wash that hampers women even more
than material obstacles.
One day I had a small triumph over Brahms. Among
my exercises for Herzogenberg were two-part ' Inventions '
in the Bach manner, and Lisl played him one of these as
a new find unearthed by the Bach Society. In it was a
certain harmonic turn not of Bach's time, but which he,
who anticipated most things, might quite well have used,
and Brahms's remark, which I must quote in the original,
was : ' Dem Kerl fallt doch immer wieder was Neues ein ! '
(' That fellow is always hitting on something new ') . When
the truth came out, the composer was warmly commended
— and this time did not deserve it. It was just a bit of suc-
cessful mimicry that any fairly clever musician might pull off.
But my greatest success with Brahms — who by the by
held that everyone resembles some orchestral instrument
and called me ' the Oboe ' — had nothing to do with music.
Piqued by his low estimate of my sex, I wrote a little sarcastic
poem the last verse of which ran :
Der grosse Brahms hat's neulich ausgesprochen :
' Ein g'scheidtes Weib, das hat doch keinen Sinn ! '
D'rum lasst uns emsig uns're Dummheit pflegen,
Denn nur auf diesem Punkt ist Werth zu legen
Als Weib und gute Brahmsianerin !
Translation
As the great Brahms recently proclaimed,
' A clever woman is a thing of naught ! '
So let us diligently cultivate stupidity,
That being the only quality demanded
Of a female Brahms admirer !
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 269
That night he was at a supper given in his honour, and
the mouth of everyone who approached him to talk about
his music was stopped by his taking the poem out of his
breast pocket and insisting on the unfortunate person read-
ing it. This characteristic proceeding went on, I was told,
throughout the evening and must have maddened the
admirers.
In post -Leipzig days I saw little of him, but once when
I was passing through Vienna and called on him, he was
more than kind and cordial and begged me to fix up a meal
at his house on my way back. Alas, when the time came
he was away.
In jotting down these various impressions I am quite
aware they do not do him justice. Even then I knew all
about his wonderful generosity to poor musicians and old
friends fallen on evil days. I noticed, too, that even the
cynicism about women was belied by the extreme delicacy
and tenderness of his work, and more especially by his
choice of words to set to music. But all I can say is that
this poetical insight did not determine his working theory
(ascribed by some foolish persons to an early disappoint-
ment in love) ; and the point of memoirs — so it seems to me
— is to relate what you saw yourself, not what other people,
books, or subsequent reflections tell you. I saw integrity,
sincerity, kindness of heart, generosity to opponents, and
a certain nobility of soul that stamps all his music ; but
on the other hand I saw coarseness, uncivilised-ness, a
defective perception of subtle shades in people and things,
lack of humour, and of course the inevitable and righteous
selfishness of people who have a message of their own to
deliver and can't run errands for others. When Wagner
died he sent a wreath and was bitterly hurt at receiving
no acknowledgement. A friend of the Wagners told me
gloatingly that Cosima had said : ' Why should the wreath
be acknowledged ? / understand the man was no friend to
Our Art ' — and my informant added : ' It was a mistake
to send it at all/ ... Of such was the Kingdom of Wagner.
The accounts that reached the world of his cruel illness
and death were infinitely tragic, for he fought against his
270 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
doom, they say, and like a child when bedtime comes,
wept and protested he did not want to go. The only con-
solation is|to believe, as I for one do, that his best work
was behind him, and that perhaps Nature did well to ring
down the curtain.
CHAPTER XXV
SPRING 1879
WHEN Brahms came to Leipzig, as he did nearly every
winter, many other composers — unenvious admirers of the
greater master such as Dvorak, Kirchner, Grieg, etc. —
used to turn up by magic to do him honour ; and of course
they all flocked to the Humboldtstrasse. My first meeting
with Grieg, whom I afterwards came to know so well, I
remember chiefly because of a well-deserved smack in the
face it brought me. Grieg, whose tastes were catholic,
greatly admired the works of Liszt. Now it was the
fashion in my world to despise Liszt as composer. But
what had to be borne as coming from mature musicians
may well have been intolerable in a student, and some
remark of mine causing Grieg's fury to boil over, he sud-
denly enquired what the devil a two-penny halfpenny
whipper-snapper like me meant by talking thus of my
betters ? Next day at cockcrow the dear man came
stumping up my stairs to apologise, and this incident laid
the foundation of a very warm feeling between me and
the Griegs which came to fruition later on.
During that winter my friendship with the Wachs grew
and consolidated, and what is more, resulted in close
relations between them and the Herzogenbergs. They had
lived in the same town for two or three years, and I really
believe would never have got beyond mere acquaintance-
ship but for some chance connecting link such as myself.
As regards aloofness Lisl found her match in Lili (whom
I shall allude to in these Memoirs as * Lili Wach,' to avoid
confusion with ' Lisl ') ; but once the ice was broken, the
two women became intimate friends, and I often think
271
272 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
the one thing Lisl stood slightly in awe of was the fastidious
judgment and penetrating instinct of Lili Wach. Both
the Herzogenbergs, who, like myself were freethinkers,
delighted in Wach, except at funerals and other functions
involving religion, but they tolerated and even admired
the simple piety of their old friend Frau von B. — mother
of the Seven Ravens — in whom it was a fundamental,
and not, as you sometimes felt with Wach, an excrescence.
By this time Leipzig balls no longer tempted me, but
there were other opportunities for the display of finery,
such as big routs at Frau Livia's or the Limburgers' in
honour of passing celebrities. On these occasions Lisl
took great interest in my personal appearance ; like my
mother she would waylay me in corners and passages with
pins and hairpins that saved the situation, and alas ! what
had irritated me in the one case touched and delighted
me in the other ! My musical education was possibly
being narrowed in that severely classical atmosphere, but
I suppose every scheme of education is either too narrow
or too diffuse. Certainly the impulse towards Opera, of
which I had been conscious in the days of Mr. Ewing, was
checked for the moment. Though exception was made of
course in favour of Mozart and ' Fidelio/ my group con-
sidered opera a negligible form of art, probably because
Brahms had wisely avoided a field in which he would not
have shone, and of which the enemy, Wagner, was in
possession. Besides this, the Golden Age of Leipzig had
been orchestral and oratorial, and both musicians and
concert public were suspicious of music-drama. The old
families, who had been rooted in their Gewandhaus seats
from time immemorial, seldom hired boxes at the Opera —
partly, perhaps, because under the system of abonnement
it was played alternately with drama ; anyhow it was not
the fashion among our Leipzig grandees. I used to go
and hear ' Carmen/ still my favourite opera, whenever I
had a chance, and was indignant at Herzogenberg's patro-
nising remark that Bizet was no doubt ' ein Geniechen ' (a
little genius). But in that school Bizet, Chopin, and all
the great who talk tragedy with a smile on their lips, who
dart into the depths and come up again instantly like
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 273
divers — who, in fact, decline to wallow in the Immensities
— all these were habitually spoken of as small people.
How I thought of this madness the other day when some-
one repeated to me a remark Forain had just made at
luncheon : ' 1'art se tient dans le creux de la main ! ' It
appeared they had been discussing Wagner, who evidently
was not of Forain's way of thinking, having written operas
the length of which always seemed to me artistically
arrogant — a wilful ignoring of the limits set by nature
to human receptivity. But Wagner is, among other
things, the greatest hypnotiser the world has ever seen,
and for the hypnotised time does not exist.
Another curious thing about the Brahms group was
that orchestration apparently failed to interest them,
consequently it played no part in my instruction. No
one holds more strongly than the writer that content
comes first ; before you speak it is well to have something
definite to say. But in that circle, what you may call
the external, the merely pleasing element in music, was
so little insisted on, that its motto really might have
been the famous ' take care of the sense and the sounds
will take care of themselves ' — hardly an adequate
outfit for a musician even if the sounds did take care of
themselves, which they do not. Once some Orchestral
Variations of Herzogenberg's were performed which I
scarcely recognised for the same I had admired as one
of the inevitable piano duets, so bad was the instru-
mentation.
But whatever the defects of my environment may have
been, in it I learned the necessity, and acquired the love, of
hard work, as well as becoming imbued with a deep passion
for Bach, which I think is in itself an education. As I
indicated elsewhere, Herzogenberg and his Berlin colla-
borators were constantly discovering and editing new
wonders, and though the Leipzig branch of the Bach
Verein was not a very grand affair the arrangement and
production of these 300-year-old novelties was enthralling
to him and us. In the early autumn and late spring it was
VOL. I. T
274 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
our custom to give concerts in small neighbouring town-
lands, starting early in various reserved third-class com-
partments, dining at an inn, and contriving to walk back
part of the way towards evening through the woods. Owing
to the benighted pitch of the organs in some of these remote
country churches there was not infrequently trouble with
the wind instruments, and on one occasion, a certain organ
being in particularly bad repute, the Herzogenbergs and
I paid it a preliminary visit armed with a horn. He under-
stood the valves but could not produce a sound ; I, on the
contrary, to whom the valves were and are a mystery could
at least blow a hunting horn. Meanwhile Lisl, physically
a model St. Cecilia but knowing less than nothing about
that saint's instrument, sat at the keyboard holding a
piercing and uncontrollable ' a/ and thus between us we
found out what the possibilities were of a friendly relation
between horn and organ. The sacristan was scandalised,
for though we were in church of course we nearly died of
laughing.
On these concert expeditions Lisl devoted herself
assiduously, as was only politic, for our funds were never
brilliant, to adoring members and their rich friends. All-
day excursions with almost any group of people are a trial,
but one moment was always exquisite. We used to take
part-songs with us, and after drinking coffee in some wood-
land restaurant a more romantic spot in the forest was
selected, the tuning fork banged on a stone, and in that
divinist of concert rooms we made divine music. To be
in the Bach Verein at all proved you were a serious, indeed
often an over-serious and exceedingly narrow-minded
musician, and if some of our members were not in their
first youth, zeal atoned for worn out vocal chords. And
the crown of all was that the whole thing came to about
is. 6d. per head.
By the time Good Friday came round again Papa
Rontgen considered me fit to take my place among the
second violins in the annual Passion performance — no
great compliment as will presently be seen — imploring me
passionately to keep my eye on the leader and not cut in
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 275
at wrong moments in my excitement. These performances—-
held in the very Thomas Kirche for which the work was
originally written, and of which Mendelssohn, who re-
discovered the Passion, had made a great tradition — are
among the most unforgettable experiences of my life. The
proceeds were devoted to the Widows and Orphans Fund
of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, but according to a curious
by-law, only those who had taken an active part in the
performance had a claim on that year's balance. Now
many modern instruments have no place in the orchestra
of Bach's time ; consequently trombones, bass clarinets,
and other outsiders vamped up in spare hours enough
violin to scrape their way through Bach's very easy string
parts, sitting generally in the ranks of the second violins.
And so vilely did they play that I quite understood why I
had been allowed to join them. This was the only time
I ever performed in an orchestra, and, as may be imagined
under the circumstances, I was astonished at the hideous
noises produced round about me — and still more astonished
the following year, when I sat below, to notice how little
it matters in a big choral work what goes on at some of
the second desks !
I count it as one of the great privileges vouchsafed me
that I learned to love the Passion in that place of places,
the prestige and acoustic properties of which make up for
the dreariness of its architecture. In one of the side
galleries, close up to the orchestra, which was grouped aloft
in front of the organ, sat the Thomaner Schoolboys, repre-
sentatives of the very choir of which Bach was Cantor. I
suppose realising these things has something to do with
it, but never, so it seems to me, is the Chorale in the opening
chorus so overwhelming as when trumpeted forth with the
pride of lawful heirs by the Thomaner Chor.
I despair of giving an idea of the devoutness of the
audience. Generally speaking, most of the inhabitants of
Leipzig, including nearly everyone I knew, were either
exceedingly conventional churchgoers or unbelievers, but
on this occasion the dull mist of religious indifference
appeared to lift for the time being. It was not only that
the church seemed flooded with the living presence of Bach,
276 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
but you felt as if the Passion itself, in that heartrending,
consoling portrayal, was being lived through as at no other
moment of their lives by every soul in the vast congrega-
tion. This is the divine part of listening to such music
in company with people who have known and loved every
note of it ever since they were born, whose natural language
it is. I suppose every artist can say of one or two hours
in the past that in these he touched the extreme height
and depth of his emotional life ; such hours were mine
during a certain Passion performance in the Thomas
Kirche, in a time of great trouble, a few years later.
The Good Friday solemnity is the supreme flower and
conclusion of the Leipzig musical season, and shortly after-
wards Lisl's father and mother appeared on the scene, but
at different moments, for they did not get on and seldom
met. I had been requested when in England to send some
fairy-book ' for my mother, who is herself a regular old
fairy-tale/ When I saw Baroness von Stockhausen, nee
Grafin Baudissin, I said to myself : ' The Wicked God-
mother ! ' and looking the other day at a superb bust of
her by Hildebrand,1 belonging to one of her grandchildren,
there is no denying that this portrait of the Evil Genius
of my life bears out that idea.
She was German by marriage only, the Baudissins being
of Danish extraction, and Lisl was proud of including
among her ancestors a certain learned Count Baudissin
who collaborated with Tieck and Schlegel in the superb
German version of Shakespere, but was too modest to
allow his name to appear on the title page. There was
also a Russian ancestress — held responsible by Lisl for some
of her mother's more difficult moods. But those of us
who know our Selma Lager! of are content to give Scandi-
navia sole credit for a personality that would have put
' Gosta Berling/ ' the Commandante/ and all those
elemental primitives into the shade.
Of a magnificent presence, gifted, witty, and violent
as ten devils rolled into one, I found this old woman, who
1 Reproduced, vol. ii. p. 104.
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 277
looked like a Louis XV. Marquise, very attractive, and
hoped she would like me ; but unfortunately I was hated
at first sight with the vitriolic jealousy of one who had
never permitted her children to have friends, or even
playmates. Herzogenberg, who was rather fond of his
mother-in-law, once said that but for his Jesuit training
he could never have achieved the winning of his bride, and
I noticed that this jocular reference to that agitating time
rather distressed Lisl. Most of her girlhood had been
passed in Austria, where the aristocratic family tradition
includes a very strict reading of the Fifth Commandment ;
and it may be imagined how this state of things would
commend itself to a mother of Frau von Stockhausen's
temperament.
The father was an icy-cold Hanoverian nobleman for
whom the world had ceased revolving round the sun on
the day when the Court of Hanover, to which he had been
Minister, was liquidated. After a first brief meeting with
these two august personages I was implored to shun the
house during the remainder of their respective visits. Lisl
was deeply pained and humiliated by her mother's out-
rageous unfriendliness towards one in whom she had
professed the most charming interest, but there was nothing
to be done. As well reason with Vesuvius. Then, for the
first time, I noticed my friend's abject terror of conflicts
. . . and also her inability to cope with them.
CHAPTER XXVI
SUMMER 1879 TO SUMMER 1880
I WAS about to say most truthfully that I remember abso-
lutely nothing about the holidays of 1879, when turning
to Lisl's letters I find to my astonishment that for a brief
moment marriage had been spoken of ! Perhaps it was in
connection with the one and only chance I had, or thought
I had, of making a ' brilliant ' marriage — a transitory after-
glow of the ' Social Ambition phase ' — which promised both
leisure for work and more money. As I have forgotten
no real inner experience however mad and foolish, and had
utterly forgotten this, the matrimonial mood must have
been quite evanescent, but Lisl's letters,1 which exhibit
her pure, lofty view of life in its perfection, followed each
other in swift agony. It was one of those storms in a tea-
cup which sprang up again and again in the course of our
friendship ; she never grasped how strongly, yet how lightly,
passing moods affect people of the impressionable type,
and each time was overwhelmed afresh with apprehension.
• •••••
During the following autumn in Leipzig I heard Pan-
Germanism talked for the first time. It was at a dinner-
party, and the exponent was Dr. Simson, a wise, polished
old Jew, President of the Imperial Court of Justice, which
as a sop to Saxony sits at Leipzig. Wach, who was my
neighbour, and suspected of aiming at the Presidency of
the Reichs-Gericht himself, whispered in my ear that the
whole thing was a wild-goose scheme. Presently the hand-
some, grey -haired old President, bending across the table
1 Appendix, ii. p. 26, No. 12 ; p. 27, No. 13.
278
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 279
in the most courtly way, trusted that the charming young
foreign lady whose presence was such a delight to everyone,
etc., etc., would not resent what he was about to say, namely
that England was now on the down-grade. So it had
been successively with Spain, Holland, and France, the
world progressing on the wheel system. And the country
now swinging to the top, and about to relieve us of the
sceptre, was . . . ' our beloved Fatherland/ That con-
versation remained in my memory chiefly because of the
speaker's tactful gilding of this pill, his discourse being
shot through with complimentary references to the great
part borne by us in civilisation. As for his thesis that
England was played out, it seemed too ridiculous to get
angry about.
I cannot remember whether the new doctrine was
ventilated conversationally or in a speech ; where pro-
fessors are present the two things are much the same, and
the occasion being rather a grand one there were many
speeches that day. I was by no means insular, I think ;
a great many German institutions that would not appeal
to the Anglo-Saxon temperament, such as the periodical
excursions into the country of musical and other guilds,
the Sunday trooping forth of whole families into the woods,
and even the ' Stammtisch ' — a table at restaurants reserved
night after night for the same group of bores — I found,
and still find charming. But a practice no amount of
familiarity ever reconciled me to was speechifying.
The Germans say of themselves that wherever three of
their nation are gathered together — say at the North Pole
— they instantly found a ' Society ' ; if so I believe it is
chiefly in order to have an excuse for making speeches.
You never were safe from them. Even at gatherings of
old friends and relations your heart would leap into your
mouth at the familiar slow tap-tap on a wineglass, followed
by the sacramental words ' Verehrte Anwesende ! ' (Honored
ones here present !) while an expression of satisfaction, such
as must steal over the faces of watchers on the Rigi when
the sun rises, transfigured all countenances — including those
of would-be modern people who pretended to dislike
speechifying.
280 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
I once saw a terrible thing happen at a birthday feast
given by Frau von B . The parquet floor was very
slippery, the chairs — of the high-backed top-heavy antique
kind — had arms, and the guests were so numerous that
these arms were touching each other. A pale, melancholy
man with dank black hair who sat next the hostess rose
with some difficulty, as a sardine might rise out of a freshly
opened box, and made one of those speeches which cause
honoured ones there present to stare at their plates and
roll bread-pellets, the theme being the merits of the deceased
master of the house. It was well meant and no doubt
sincere, but more than usually platitudinal, involved, and
sham-pathetic. When at last, after an over-intimate
peroration, the speaker sat down suddenly as if overcome
by emotion, the chair slid away from behind him and he
absolutely disappeared from view, to be grasped under the
armpits and hoisted up, swathed in folds of embroidered
table-cloth, by the horror-stricken ladies to right and left
of him. No one smiled ; the tone of the speech made it
impossible to pass the thing off as a joke, to express regret,
or do anything but pretend no one had noticed the incident.
And this feat we all accomplished.
On the other hand the Fairs, of which I had spoken
disparagingly in an early letter home, ended by completely
captivating my fancy. The great Autumn Fair, with its
ramshackle booths and strangely costumed traders from
all parts of the world, including Polish Jews of a concen-
trated essence of Israel seldom seen in England, was really
picturesque ; and what redeemed it from the vulgarity of
the same thing at International Exhibitions was the know-
ledge that everyone was there on business only. We
particularly loved the crockery market, which was held On
the picturesque side of the town ; all the wares were strewn
pell-mell on the ground, and alas ! uncouth, savagely coloured
descendants of antique pottery of beautiful design were
already being crowded out by the forerunners of TArt
Nouveau ; when you chose one of them the saleswomen
thought you must be mad. But I think I loved the
Christmas Fair best, for then Birnam Wood came to Dun-
sinane, the large open space between the Museum and the
i879 IN GERMANY AND ITALY 281
New Theatre being turned into a forest of snow-covered
little firs. Whole families went forth to choose the
Christmas-tree, each child shriekingly recommending a
different one till ' mein Mann ' finally clinched the matter.
The Christmas of 1879 I spent in Berlin. There had been
much lamentation on my part because the Herzogenbergs
were suddenly summoned to spend the Festival with her
mother at the Austrian aunt's Schloss, but shortly before
their departure I made the acquaintance of a couple, the
Conrad Fiedlers, who were destined to play a great part
in my life. He was the younger son of a grand old Leip-
zigerinn who lived with her eldest son's family in the town
house in winter, and at her beautiful country place a few
miles off in the summer. All the Fiedlers were very rich,
and why the Conrads had settled at Berlin I never could
make out, for they both detested it and were on the point
of migrating to her native town, Munich.
Conrad was of a type you seldom meet in Germany,
a fairly well known writer on philosophical subjects, an
acknowledged authority on painting and sculpture, a
generous patron of struggling talent, and yet . . . O
wonder ! attached to no Institution . . . merely a gentle-
man at large. More than usually encased in a certain
Saxon frigidity that contrasts strangely with the geniality
of the other brand of Saxon, I noticed that everyone secretly
coveted his esteem and that his word always carried weight.
His wife was one of those people whom all portrait painters
pursue, more especially if the husband is a wealthy art
patron. At that time she was quite young, tall and striking
looking, with daring, gloriously blue eyes, yellow-gold
hair, and incomparable colouring. Unlike most of the
friends mentioned in these pages she is still alive, therefore
I will merely say that we were very fond of each other for
years, although later on, after her first husband's death,
when she and Frau Wagner became great friends, we
gradually drifted apart. A gulf was bound to open up
sooner or later between intimates of Wahnfried and people
refractory to the Wagner cultus. Meanwhile, whether at
Munich, at Crostewitz (his mother's country house, where
282 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
an ideal summer retreat had been contrived for them at
one end of the homely farm quadrangle attached to the
Schloss) or at their Florentine Villino, their kindness to
me was inexhaustible.
I first met these new friends, as I said, before what
promised to be a desolate Christmas bereft of Lisl, and with
the warm impulsiveness which was her chief charm, Mary
Fiedler bore me off to Berlin then and there.
Curiously enough I cannot remember anything about
my first impressions of the town itself but plenty about
the people I met there. Of the Joachims I saw a good
deal. She was the finest contralto I ever heard, and until
she got too fat, the Orpheus of one's dreams. Joachim
according to all English people was of course perfection,
but I saw him in another setting and never wholly
liked him — perhaps among other reasons because trouble
was even then brewing in his house and all my sympathies
were with the wife, who, though socially far less satisfactory
than her husband, was a warm, living, human being. I
wished she would not crawl under the supper table in a fit
of New Year jollity, armed with a hat pin, but why did
Joachim allow it, I asked myself ? Why did he sit serenely
at the head of the table looking like a planed-down Jupiter
and utter no remonstrance ? In a certain letter l Rubin-
stein's answer to this riddle may be found, and though
obviously grotesque, it proves that I was not the only
Joachim-heretic in the world. That evening he told me
he had just heard Melba, and raved about her ; « How can
one speak of coldness/ he asked, ' in connection with such
phrasing ? ' Perhaps he knew that the same accusation
was often levelled against himself, and in both cases it is
obvious what people meant — the ' coldness/ compared
to Renaissance work, of the Delphic Charioteer, which is
not to everyone's taste.
Early in these Memoirs I told how a fully fledged but
not very bright cousin of mine expected to see smoke
coming up through the water when trains passed under
the Basingstoke Canal — an anecdote some people believe
Appendix, ii. p. in.
i879
IN GERMANY AND ITALY
283
with difficulty. I can relate a fact, also on oath, about
that exceptionally intelligent and cultivated man, Joachim,
which I find still more incredible, namely that in the year
1880 or thereabouts he had no notion that the figures on
the metronome refer to the number of beats per minute.
Herzogenberg, speechless with amazement, seized him by
the lapel of his coat : ' But what then, dear friend/ he
asked, ' do you represent to yourself when you set it ? '
' Nothing ! ' answered Joachim, ' I note the tempo but
have never troubled my head about the basis of the matter.
... I supposed it was . . . well, just like that ! ' Where-
upon Lisl remarked, ' Thank God ! now I hope Heinrich
will cease talking about women's unarithmetical brains/
It was in Berlin that Christmas that I first met Rubin-
stein, and in unexpected mood too. A totally talentless
maiden, relying I suppose on her great beauty — for
his weaknesses were notorious — had insisted on play-
ing to him with a view to being advised as to whether
she should make music her career. When she had done
he remarked quite simply : ' How should you ever become
an artist ? ' and then, taking up her hand, he pointed in
succession to her fingers, her forehead, and her heart, slowly
saying ' hier nix, hier nix, und hier nix ! ' — a terrible sequence
of nothingness that needs no translation. There was one
thing only that roused the mild-mannered Conrad Fiedler
to frenzy — half talents, and when I reported this incident
he was delighted.
I also saw a good deal of two paladins of Brahms's,
Philip Spitta, the chief excavator and editor of lost Bach
treasures, and Chrysander, the biographer of Handel, who
told me there were masses of yet un deciphered Early English
music in the British Museum compared to which the work
of Palestrina and Co. was the groping of children, or words
to that effect. After Brahms's death two letters of mine
were returned to me (one being written at Sir George
Grove's request to beg the loan of the ' Tragic Overture '
for the Crystal Palace Concerts) and I find I well rubbed
in the learned Chrysander's tribute to despised England.
When next we met Brahms asked me to play him some
Scotch music, and after listening to one of those archaic
284 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1879
reels the first phrase of which is, for instance, in D major
and the second in C major, the remark was : ' And this
people claims to be musical ' ! . . .
Fiedler's collection was very fine, and ranged from a
superb Holbein to the early works of the great German
sculptor Hildebrand, whose first patron he was and whom
he completely relieved from the necessity of prostituting
his genius. There were also plenty of modern German
pictures (including about ten portraits of Mary) — Feuerbach
and Bocklin, who by the by was Swiss, being the only
names I can recall ; but in the Museum, introducing me
to Manet and the French School, he once remarked : ' Of
course one must encourage native talent but oh ! for some-
thing on this level ! ' Feuerbach I thought the bore of bores
and loathed Stuck, but Manet seemed impossible to take
seriously. I marvelled at Conrad's enthusiasm though
certain he was right, for one felt he knew. He introduced
me to his great friend Bode, Director, or perhaps then he
was only Sub-Director, of the Museum. I never was sorrier
for anyone than for that man when I next saw him, in 1901.
Under a monarch who did not paint himself, he had got
together a wonderful collection of modern pictures, the
apple of his eye. But now he was in deep disgrace ; the
pictures were stowed away under the roof, where it was
hoped no one would clamber up to see them, and there had
been a moment, fortunately staved off, when a particularly
fine Zuloaga seemed likely to leave Berlin for ever by
command of the All Highest. Altogether that short stay
in Berlin was most kindling, and was to lead to further
developments before long.
Meanwhile I was being a subject of strife in a distant
ancestral home. Lisl wrote of ' my poor mother's King
Lear-like feelings/ and when we met in Leipzig I gathered
that the family meeting had not been an unqualified success.
That winter two English friends turned up, St. John
Brodrick and another man I will not name, merely saying
that he afterwards became Headmaster of one of our great
public schools and was considered in England to be very
i88o IN GERMANY AND ITALY 285
musical, mainly because he sang German songs in German.
I introduced him of course to my friends, but what I did
not bargain for was his proposing to perform himself and
asking Lisl to accompany his wooden, business-like rendering
of a particularly romantic song of Brahms' s, the refrain of
which gave full scope for our very peculiar English * r.'
The effect was indescribably comic. I, naturally, was
covered with shame ; as for Lisl, she literally laid her head
on the music to conceal her laughter, while the singer
plodded on sturdily, far too pleased with himself to notice
anything. But whereas she was only amused at this
exhibition and forthwith added an incomparable bit of
mimicry to her repertory, Herzogenberg was irritated at
the bottomless cheek of this countryman of mine, especially
after he had upset the cream-jug over Lisl's black velvet
gown, merely remarking : ' that comes of gesticulating/
In April the Herzogenbergs went to Italy, and my
longing, inflamed by contact with the Fiedlers, to go there
myself was such, that I begged her, as in the case of hunting
in the home correspondence, never to mention the word
' Italy ' in her letters — a piece of unreasonableness and in-
tense selfishness that serene well-balanced person could not
understand but reproachfully gave in to. On my mother's
birthday, June 2, there was a performance at the Wach's
by Rontgen and his team of a string quartett of mine, a
mere piece of student's work of course. I have said hard
things about German speechifying, but on this occasion
Wach made a most beautiful little speech about my mother,
and about absent friends who did their best to replace her
as regards one of her children. By that time Lisl's raillery
had almost cured my childish habit of tears, but it was
difficult to keep them back then. There were two great
bonds between me and Lili Wach, who was very religious
— my thorough knowledge of the Bible, and my devotion
to my mother — and I noticed this speech of her husband's
moved her as much as it did me. Afterwards I got up
and silently kissed him ; the action wasn't ridiculous
and seemed so to no one. I don't think anything ever
gave my mother greater pleasure than hearing about that
evening.
286 IMPRESSIONS THAT REMAINED 1880
Part of the early summer of 1880 I spent at Crostewitz,
and was thrilled to see the small round cannon balls of 1813
still sticking in the walls of the house. Madame Fiedler,
as everyone called Conrad's mother (a nomenclature dating
from the cannon-ball era and which seemed only to have
survived in her case) kept open house, and on Saturdays
and Sundays the lake and skittle-ground swarmed with
the * nice ' people of the neighbourhood, reinforced by stiffly
buttoned-up, heel-clicking officers from the garrison. Later
on a gorgeous supper was served in a big verandah fronting
the wood-girt lake, followed by cards for the seniors, and
society games, boating, and flirtation for the juniors.
Madame Fiedler was passionately fond of whist, and one
evening I heard her remark to a profusely decorated General
and Excellenz who had just lost her the game, that she
feared the young ones were better at loving-making than
their elders at cards. This characteristic little dig, delivered
with a pensive, kindly smile, went home, the Excellenz's
spendthrift son, a Lieutenant in the Guards, being at that
moment engaged in exploring the woods with a penniless
beauty. Mary, who detested these gatherings, would
generally plead ill-health and retire to her vast bed, where
she partook of a delicate supper and half a bottle of cham-
pagne. Country joys did not appeal to her, and most of
her time at Crostewitz was spent in that bed.
Madame Fiedler's eldest son, Philipp, goodnaturedly
gave me the run of his stable, and the two astonished
carriage horses were driven tandem about the tortuous,
rut -riven lanes. One of them, a grey whose hind-quarters
I thought looked like jumping, was even urged over the
fences on the steeple-chase course. Once we came a terrific
crash which slightly crippled both me and my mount for
a time and nearly killed Madame Fiedler, who though the
most masterful of old chatelaines was exceedingly nervous
about animals. Dreamy Doctor Philipp — of course like
all cultivated Germans he had taken his degree in philosophy
— was a poet of real talent gone to seed (for unfortunately
he versified as some people chatter, without reflection or
self-control), and the result of this adventure was a fantastic
poetical drama in which all the personages of our little
i88o IN GERMANY AND ITALY 287
world were introduced with pseudonyms of the ' Pilgrim's
Progress ' kind. For instance Mary was ' Lockenlicht '
(Shining-locks), Herzogenberg ' Canonicus Fugenfiirst '
(Canon Fugue-prince), Lisl ' Etherzart ' (Delicate-as-Ether),
the author himself, who had been, much blamed by his
wife and mother for lending me the horse, ' Doctor Unbe-
dacht ' (Doctor Thoughtless), and so on.
This kindly man had one little weakness, a tendency to
exaggerated thrift, and if everyone had not already known
that Madame Fiedler's open-handed hospitality caused her
heir some heartburnings they would have guessed it from
his naive choice of a pseudonym for her — ' Frau Spendegern '
(Mrs. Glad-to-Spend). In conclusion the play was called
' Miss Hopp-in-die-Welt ' — here no translation is required —
and was supposed to be very complimentary to the heroine,
but to see ourselves as others see us is seldom all satisfaction.
I mention this amazing production, in which there are
some very pretty verses, because the whole incident was so
typical.
That spring there was a good deal of tennis at Dolitz,
the Limburgers' country house (though the real Dolitz
period came later) and there was also a plan of my going
to Ober Ammergau with Johanna Rontgen ; but the absurd
thing is that I cannot remember whether it came off or
whether I only assisted at the performance in the illustrated
papers — pests that take the edge off everything but acutest
first-hand impressions. Anyhow I know that I eventually
joined my mother at Homburg, she having been convoyed
thither, very ill, by one of my married sisters, and remember
her maid remarking scornfully as she struggled with the
usual chest of drawers fitted with one key only : ' I suppose
the Germans don't know what knobs is.' After that we
went on to Ragatz, where alas ! as at Homburg, I jeered
at mother's enthusiasm for the Kurhaus bands. On the
way home we spent a couple of days in Paris ; although
she was hardly able to stand a few new bonnets were picked
up, and on this journey, as ever when she was really ill,
her pluck and cheerfulness filled me with admiration.
And so to England, where the financial situation was much
discussed and nothing radical done to meet it.
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ML Smyth, (Dame) Ethel Mary
410 Impressions that remained
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